AU5: On Serenity
by Lilac Reverie
Summary: Alternating Universes Series, Part Five: Back in the original universe, the Doctor, twin Rose, Jenny, and Joshua begin their new lives as a family - but danger comes knocking! Ten/RoseB/Jenny/Joshua and a surprise guest star.
1. Prologue: Spoilers

_**A/N:** And off we go again! This is the fifth entry in my _Alternating Universes_ series, immediately following _The Traveler_. As always, new readers are strongly encouraged to start at the beginning, with _Sea Change_._

* * *

**Alternating Universes, Part Five**

**On Serenity**

Back in the original universe, the Doctor, twin Rose, Jenny, and Joshua  
begin their new lives as a family - but danger comes knocking!

**Prologue - Spoilers**

Previously, in "The Traveler"...

_(While en route to SenSaru'a in the Baby TARDIS; Joshua, Corin, and Rose are in the Control Room.) Joshua swung back around and began working the controls again, concentrating. After a moment, the Time Rotor began its mesmerizing, glowing action, pumping them across the universe. Joshua peered at his monitor, puzzled. "That's not quite right." He held his hand out towards Corin without looking. "Brandon, would you punch up – ." He swung around and winced, choking off the sentence. "Sorry. Dad. Can you call up the nav program to SenSaru'a? Should be right on top there," motioning to the screen beside his father._

_Corin didn't turn. He gazed at Josh, a bemused expression covering his face. "Who's Brandon? A companion?"_

_Josh spluttered a bit. "Um... Yeah... More or less."_

_Corin glanced over at Rose, more amused by the second. "That's a very enigmatic answer. Are you trying not to shock your doddering old folks?"_

"_What?" It took Joshua a second to catch on, then he burst out laughing. "_No_," he said emphatically between snorts, before he caught his breath again. "No, that's not it." A deep sigh. "I'm wrestling with spoilers, actually. I honestly don't know what I can or shouldn't tell you guys right now... The story's not over yet. I haven't closed the loop."_

_Corin turned back to Rose again. "He gets more enigmatic with every sentence."_

_She nodded, as amused at her husband as her son. "Well, he came by it naturally."_

"_Oi! I'm not that bad, am I? .. Any more?" he added as an afterthought._

_She laughed, taking pity on him. "No, you've definitely improved over the years. Although, you do still have your moments..."_

_^..^_

Corin turned back to Joshua. "You 'haven't closed the loop?' Come on, son, it's me..."

Josh sighed. "Well... OK. Maybe you can help me figure it all out." He reached behind him and flicked a lever, temporarily halting the TARDIS' travel through the Void, then put his feet back up on the coffee table column and leaned back again.

"About fifteen years after we arrived in the other universe – I'll tell you that whole story later – Baby here was mostly grown; still had a lot of finishing touches left, but the basics were in place. We'd been taking trips in her for a while, and I'd begun soloing that year.

"Well, I took off on a trip one day by myself, about the fourth or fifth time I'd soloed. I came back a few days later – and they were gone. The Doctor and Rose had disappeared. I just about had a heart attack, thinking I'd done something wrong, when I finally stepped in the right place and triggered his message."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a thick metal disk, about the size of a silver dollar. He placed it on the coffee table (putting his feet back on the floor), and pressed the center of it. A hologram of the Doctor appeared in the air above it, looking for all the world like Princess Leia (without the white robes, of course). He was grinning ear to ear, and held up his holographic hands immediately.

"Joshua! Stop panicking! It's OK. Rose and I have gone off on a little trip. Just jump forward three days – _jump_, mind you – and we'll be here.

"Now, listen, this is important. _Save this message._ Some day you're going to need to know the date. Just one thing: do NOT jump back until you are absolutely certain it's time. Don't worry about this, though. There will be no doubt in your mind when the time comes – trust me.

"And Josh... don't ever forget how much we both love you. Always." The Doctor's image faded out.

_He hasn't changed a bit,_ Corin thought. _At least, he hadn't then. I wonder..._ Shaking his head, he turned back to Joshua. "And that's all you know?"

"That's it. I jumped ahead three days – yes, I resisted the temptation to just wait for them. No paradoxes, thanks. They were there, as promised. They just smiled and gave me a hug, and never said anything more about it. Not once."

"No hints at all?" asked Rose.

"No. Although..." He paused. "He was different after that. Not her, so much, but he was."

"Different how? Good or bad?"

"Good. It was like..." He looked at his Dad. "You know the burdens he carries, even though you really have to know him to see it. But after that, it was as though those burdens had gotten lighter. As if.. as if something deep inside him was healed. So whatever it is, it's a good thing, I don't doubt it. I just wish I knew what it was." He sighed. "All these years, I've talked myself into believing that it was this, that I'd be bringing them here, when I finally found the way back to this universe. But... So far, there's been nothing here that makes me _sure_." He grimaced, looking at each in turn. "I don't suppose one of you needs a kidney, or something?"

They laughed, shaking their heads. "Sorry, no. Or, not sorry, actually, but still no," Rose answered. She smiled at him. "Don't worry. It'll happen eventually."

He sighed. "Yeah. I'll be glad when that mystery's solved, though – it's been the proverbial itch I can't scratch for decades."

Rose grew thoughtful. "So is that incident the only thing that has you worried? I take it you're afraid if you tell us something that happened after that, and then you bring them here to meet us again, that we'll let the spoilers slip?" He nodded, and she grinned, almost wickedly. "OK. I'll give you all the other decades after that – if you'll give US those fifteen years. Surely no harm can come from _that_ part of the story then?"

He laughed. "Nope," popping the P just like the Doctor used to. "All right, children, settle down, and I'll tell you a bedtime story..."


	2. Decision

**Decision**

Joshua wandered down a hall in the TARDIS, stretching and yawning, in search of the kitchen and some breakfast. With coffee. Make that coffee with breakfast. After living in Earth's rhythms for the first fifteen years of his life, adjusting to the loss of those natural cycles was going to take some doing. He'd slept longer and harder than he'd expected to, but then, he and Jenny had been up for most of the preceding five days (at least it felt like that long, he couldn't be sure) exploring the TARDISes, mother and baby, and getting to know each other, while the Doctor and Rose remained holed up in his room – make that their room – renewing their Life Bond and having something of a second honeymoon. A few appearances in the kitchen when the couple decided they were hungry was all the pair of cousins (they decided 'cousins' worked better than 'siblings' for both of them) had seem of them. The 'kids' didn't begrudge them their privacy after they'd been ripped apart by Rose inadvertently following Joshua through the wormhole between universes and into the Time Lock around Gallifrey; the destruction of that lock five days before had brought about their reunion, leaving the four of them together in the TARDIS in the Doctor's original universe, forming their own – slightly odd – family of four.

_No, wait. I'm turned around again. Or else the TARDIS has rearranged herself again. The kitchen's that way._ He was several steps down the other hallway before he even realized he was following his nose, rather than any memory of the ship's layout: Jenny must have beaten him to the kitchen and started the coffee brewing. Joshua smiled. He'd taken an instant liking to her army-strong brew; just one of his cousin's many charms. He firmly stopped his racing mind before it went too far down that corridor, reminding himself she was a good twenty years his elder, having been 'born' an adult that many years before. _I'm just a kid, I'm fifteen, she couldn't possibly be interested,_ he told himself for the umpteenth time.

Plastering a kid-brother's smile on his face, he stepped through the door and found he was correct: his pretty blonde cousin was already there, back turned, leaning against the counter near Coffee Central. The french press she insisted on using in lieu of the electric coffeemaker she'd firmly relegated to the back row was gently steaming, a cup low already, sending seductive promises of caffeinated goodness wafting through the air.

"Good morning!" he chirped at her (cringing a little at the nerdy-birdyness of it), and went to pour his own cup. He was doctoring it up to his taste with milk and sugar before he realized she hadn't replied – in fact, she'd turned her face away from him, hunching her shoulders a bit over her mug. _Is she crying?_ He reached out with his senses, and found her till-now bright, happy song had turned dirgelike, mourning something lost and forlorn.

"Jenny?" He stepped closer, and put a tentative hand on her shoulder, finding it _was_ shaking. "What's wrong?"

She crumpled sideways a little, her cup drifting down onto the counter – and then she suddenly turned and flung her arms around his neck, and tears came pouring out. Stunned, all he could do was hold her awkwardly back as she sobbed into his shoulder for several long minutes. _Just the right height!_ came the irrepressibly hopeful voice in his head, before he quashed it.

"What the..." said the Doctor from the doorway. Joshua looked over at him, concerned bewilderment on his face, shrugging his confusion, and the Time Lord came quickly over to the pair, Rose at his shoulder. She stepped around both men and put her hand on Jenny's shoulder. "Jenny?"

The younger woman reacted to the touch and the sound of her voice, taking a deep, gasping breath and pulling her arms back, then turning a heartbroken face to Rose. "Oh, sweetheart, what is it?" Another deep, shuddering breath, and finally she made herself say it.

"I'm pregnant."

A trio of gasps met her announcement. It was Rose who pegged it first. "John?" she asked gently, remembering Jenny's closeness to her (Rose's) descendent during her brief time in Pete's World. Jenny nodded, miserable.

"Oh, sweetheart." The Doctor was astonished at the revelation; unlike his wife, he hadn't been aware of that development in Jenny's relationship with the eleventh Lord Gallifrey. "I... I don't know what to say."

Jenny shook her head. "There's nothing to say. I know the walls are closed. There's no way back. It's not..." She stopped, reaching for the words to explain. "It's not for me, so much, that I'm so sad. What we had... it was potential. But it wasn't..." Unwilling to say the L word, she rushed on. "No, it's the knowledge that my son will grow up without ever knowing his father. That maybe he'll _never_ meet him." She looked at the Doctor. "I know how that feels."

He nodded, remembering her scanty tales of the nine long years she'd traveled all alone, before the TARDIS had called her across the stars to his hiding place on the jungle planet. Remembering, too, all the many times he'd found himself alone, all the centuries of life before he'd found his family. But there was nothing he could do to help her now. The walls between the universes were solidly closed.

Her words replayed in his mind, and he gave her a small grin. "'Son'?" he quoted back. "Are you sure?"

She stared, startled, then turned her gaze inward, focusing her Time Lord inner senses on the tiny new growth deep within, and a slow, surprisingly shy smile finally reached her lips. "Yeah..." she said slowly. "I didn't even realize before I said it. But yes, it's a boy."

Joshua was silent, rocked by the news, completely unsure what to think or feel about it. _Who the hell is John? Well, somebody back in the other universe, obviously. Shit._ He silently fought down the tide of confusion and jealousy, telling himself to concentrate on the here and now; he'd deal with his reactions later in private.

The Doctor finally reached out and pulled Jenny into a tight hug. "Congratulations, sweetheart. This is wonderful news. A new addition to our family already!" He pulled back an inch, looking into her eyes. "I know it's going to be hard, separated like this. But that just means that all of us will simply have to do our best to make up for that."

Sitting around the table a few minutes later, sipping their mugs of coffee, Rose turned to the Doctor. "I'm wildly curious about something, though. Sorry if this embarrasses you, Jenny, but... Doctor, how is this possible? Jenny's your clone, so she's a Time Lord, but John is human. He's my descendent, mine and Corin's. How could they have...?"

Her husband was thoughtful. "I've been wondering the same thing. I think... Corin isn't completely human, only half. Enough so that his genetics adapted to yours, and you could have children. But there must have been enough Gallifreyan left, passed down through your line, so that John's genetics could adapt back to Jenny's – or hers to his." He shrugged. "Without getting some samples from each of them to examine, that's as good an answer as I can figure." Realizing what was behind her query, he reached for her mind on their telepathic Life Bond link. _*No. I'm still one-hundred-percent Time Lord, you're still one-hundred-percent human. It won't work for us. I'm sorry, love. I'm so sorry. I would have loved that, too.*_

She smiled sadly, and reached for his hand, hiding her disappointment behind her coffee cup with her other hand. _*We'll just have to be content with being grandparents to Jenny's baby, I guess.*_ He squeezed her hand back, agreeing.

_*Speaking of which...*_ he realized something, and went vocal. "Well, people, it looks like we have a decision to make." All three of his audience looked at him, puzzled. "Where do we want to live for the next few years?"

Jenny blinked. "Here in the TARDIS?" her voice was full of the confusion they all felt.

The Doctor shook his head. "Constant time travel is NOT good for pregnant women, let alone young children – let _alone_ the jolting this bucket sometimes gives us. It's dangerous, honey, and I won't put you or your child through it." He saw her start to protest, and spoke over her. "I'm not kidding, Jenny, or just being overly cautious. Back in the days of the Time Lords, pregnant women were fairly strictly prohibited from hopping about in the time stream. In the early days, there were some pretty horrific results. In my day, it was just accepted, as much as not smoking or drinking to excess." He grimaced. "Even just hanging around in the Void for several months – in addition to being excruciatingly boring – can have some pretty nasty effects on an unborn child."

"Oh. I hadn't thought of that. Then..."

"Then... Time Out!" He grinned at them all. "Where do we want to live? And when? We've got all of time and space to choose from!"

They discussed it at length over breakfast, and beyond, first nailing down what kind of society and how advanced they wanted it to be. Obviously, any place going through an armed conflict of any scale or type was out, as were the harsh dictatorships or other repressive regimes, huge natural disasters, societal upheavals from scarce resources, etc. There was still plenty to choose from.

"What about back on Earth, from my day, or near it?" Rose asked. "It would be kind of nice to see some of our old friends again."

The Doctor shook his head. "I'm sorry, love. I can't risk going back there for any length of time, not within a hundred years of your birth. I've been there just too much, too often, and done way too many things there. The chances of a paradox would be astronomical – almost inevitable. And I've no desire to see any more Reapers, thanks."

He sighed. "All I want is some place quiet, some peaceful little corner of the universe. Some place serene."

Jenny jerked her head up at that, and a slow, brilliant smile spread across her face. "Have you ever been to Serenity, Dad?"


	3. Arrival

**Arrival**

"Oh, this is _perfect!_" Jenny's smile was as brilliant as the sunrise, thought Joshua – though, from the looks of it, it was more like early afternoon here. "I know _exactly_ where we are," she went on. She led the other three travelers out from the alley they'd landed the TARDIS in, and into the middle of a large public plaza, which almost might have been transplanted whole from any pre-industrial European town. Smoothed cobblestones stretched from the ornate central fountain to the arcade - the arched, covered walkway - ringing the six sides, beyond which were the usual shop fronts and office entrances. Every bit of stonework was of variegated green marble and limestone, which combined with the splashing fountain gave the plaza a calm, cool, inviting atmosphere, complemented by the half-dozen tall trees spreading their shady canopies around the fountain.

"Oooooh," breathed Rose, spinning slowly around, a delighted smile teasing her lips. "This is lovely. I like it here already."

"Welcome to the Fountain Plaza – not a terribly original name, but then, they kept everything simple on Serenity. We're in the largest public plaza in Crescent City, the capital of Somerset, one of the two hundred and fifty-three semi-autonomous regions on the planet." Jenny grimaced at herself. "This concludes our geography lesson for today, class. The rest you must discover on your own."

The Doctor had been studying the architecture. "No metal. Only wood, stone, and glass. Nothing over three stories as far as I can see. It almost looks organic." He took a deep breath, half-closing his eyes as he sampled the air. "Almost no pollution, either. There's a sea nearby, though, with a working seaport – and a small spaceport in the other direction."

Jenny snickered at her father. "You're good!"

"Serenity, Serenity..." he mumbled, ignoring her. "Ah! Wasn't that one of the Covenant Planets?"

"What's a Covenant Planet?" asked Joshua, as Jenny shrugged.

"Many of the planets settled by humans in the first wave, coming directly from Earth, were founded by people so horrified and disgusted by how 'ruined, raped, and ravaged' – that's a quote – Earth had become that they established their charters and constitutions according to the principles of what was known as The Great Natural Covenant: limiting growth and the exploitation of natural resources, prohibiting pollution and excessive urbanization, that kind of thing. Most of those Covenants were slowly eroded away over the centuries, but some held on for an amazingly long time. If I recall correctly, Serenity was one of the ones who held on, for a very very _very _long time." He turned to Jenny. "What year is it, anyway?"

"I'm not sure of the galactic year, but I remember they celebrated their millennium a couple of decades ago – if I hit my target, anyway. I tried to get us here a few years after my last visit. Let me check on that..." She walked over a street vendor displaying her wares under one of the many small colorful awnings dotting the plaza. "Sweet day to you, melora. Can you tell me the date? We just made planetfall, and we're a bit disoriented yet."

The old woman looked up from her jewelry furnace and smiled. "Sweet day to _you_, melora! Today is the seventeenth of Jeraint, Ten-thirty-one. That's in our years, melora; I don't know what date it is out yonder." She waved skyward, meaning the rest of the universe.

"Just about when I was aiming for!" Jenny grinned broadly. "And please, who is the Regional Governor?"

"Goray Tannert, same as has been for the last twenty years. May he stay in office for many more! He saved the Covenant, you know."

"Yes, I know." Jenny gave the woman a last smile and turned back to the family. "Yes, now I remember. There was a lot of talk about 'the Covenant' back then." She led the others towards the fountain. "Did you ever hear of the Devron Group, Dad?" He shook his head. "No matter. They're a huge interplanetary commerce group, with a shady reputation. When I was here before, they were trying to muscle in, wanting to set up huge quarries for the green stone – and mines for other things, as well – and export it offworld, promising huge profits for all. They tried a number of different ways to get around the Covenant restrictions, including attempted bribery of regional officials, and trying to buy the election when it came to a general vote – and they were suspected of a great many other even less savory dealings. It all came to a head a few days before the last general election, right here in this plaza, as a matter of fact." She turned and pointed towards the opposite corner, then faltered, her hand sinking to her side. "I should have known," she said quietly.

In front of the columned arcade stood a tall obelisk, made of the same polished green marble. Hidden from the travelers till now by the fountain, it soared gracefully upwards, coming to a point twenty feet above the bricks.

"They must have put that up after I left." She took a sudden deep breath. "There was an explosion, a bomb. Apparently the target was the Regional Governor, but it went off prematurely, several minutes before he was due to begin his speech on a temporary stage on that spot." Her voice trailed away; she didn't seem interested in going over to inspect the obelisk closely or read the inscription they could see at the base.

Joshua was watching her out of the corner of his eye, listening on several levels. "Someone you knew – someone you cared about – died in the explosion, didn't they?" he asked, just loudly enough for the Doctor and Rose to hear, as well.

Jenny simply nodded, blinking hard. Resolutely turning her back, she went on. "We weren't able to prove who had planted the bomb, but it turned the tide of public opinion, anyway, and the changes to the charter the Devron Group needed were almost unanimously voted down. They disappeared shortly after that – gave up and went elsewhere, looking for easier pickings."

The Doctor had looked at her sharply. "'We'?" he asked.

His daughter looked at him, and an almost shy grin stole back across her face. "Yeah. 'We'. I was helping." She lifted her chin. "Shall we go see if Governor Tannert still remembers me?"

"As if anyone could ever forget you," Rose grinned back, echoing aloud the thought in Joshua's mind.

"_Allons-y!_" agreed the Doctor. Jenny pointed to one of the pedestrian streets leading from a corner of the plaza, and off they went.

^..^

Government House was a large three-story stone building taking up an entire city block, a short walk from Fountain Plaza. Jenny led the way up the wide staircase to the ornate glass doors recessed into one side, and they walked into the cool interior, lined floor to ceiling with more polished green marble. A number of handsomely-uniformed armed guards were stationed about the wide lobby, looking half for show, half for business. Jenny walked up to the reception desk in front of the central staircase, ready to ask the guards behind it if an interview with the Governor might be possible – when suddenly the one in the center, who a moment before had appeared to be giving orders to the others, peered closely at her, gave a tiny gasp, and sprang to attention, surprising everyone with a snappy salute.

"Colonel Starr!" he rapped out. "Welcome back!"

While her family gaped at her, Jenny blushed and shook her head. "You had to go and do that, didn't you?" she muttered. "Please," she continued louder, "don't salute. I'm not your superior." She looked more closely at the guard, whose companions had sprung to their feet, as well, hands flying up to their eyebrows in copycat salutes. "Bender, isn't it? And you've made Captain! No, please, at ease, everyone!" She waved their hands down.

Captain Bender snapped his hand back to his side, and his men followed suit. He grinned at the blonde's recognition. "Yes, Colonel. Four years ago. Captain-Commander of the Regional Guard!"

"Congratulations, then. Is the Governor in?"

"Yes, ma'am! And I know he'll be happy to see you. Please, if you will come with me?" Bender turned smartly and almost marched around the end of the desk, waving the visitors towards the staircase.

"Colonel Starr?" the Doctor whispered loudly, teasing.

She glanced at him, embarrassed. "I told you I used that last name, Dad."

"Funny how you never mentioned the 'Colonel' part, though."

"It was purely an honorary title, I assure you."

"I beg to differ, ma'am." Captain Bender had overheard, and jumped to her defense. "Without your help during the crisis, we'd all be minions of the Devron Group now." He looked at the Doctor. "They tried to foment an armed uprising, which we were completely unprepared for. No experience in actual combat at all – we've always been at peace here on Serenity. But the Colonel whipped us into shape, and we mounted a defense, which kept their people contained until help arrived, then they scooted. Not much of a skirmish for a regular army, I'm sure, wouldn't even be mentioned most places offworld, but a very big deal for us."

"I'm sure it was, Captain. I wasn't dismissing her abilities."

Jenny shot the Doctor a level look. "All that tactical knowledge I was born with finally came in handy. We held them off without a single casualty."

The Doctor nodded, able to approve of this use of her internal military database.

The five had climbed up one floor, then crossed a wide landing covered with an enormous intricately woven rug in red and black, and through a pair of carved double wooden doors. "Important visitors to see the Governor," the Captain told the secretary sitting behind the large desk in the anteroom. "Is he in a meeting?"

"No, but – " was as far as the hapless woman got.

"I'll announce them myself." He strode on to the far door, sweeping it open with a grand gesture. "Governor Tannert! Colonel Starr has returned at last!"

"_Jenny!_" An elegant, if slightly portly, man sprang to his feet and came swiftly around the massive desk, beaming; first taking both her hands in his, then as quickly dropping them to sweep her up into a massive hug. "Oh, welcome back, my dear! It is _so_ good to see you again!"

"And you, Goray!" Obviously as fond of him as he was of her, she squeezed him back, hard. "How goes it with you?"

"Well enough, well enough. We trudge along as always. But come! Who are your companions?"

Jenny turned with a smile, tucking her hand familiarly into his elbow, and led him over to the others. "This is my family, Goray. The Doctor; Rose, his wife; and Joshua. Governor Goray Tannert." Through the years they'd traveled together, Jenny and her father had found that mentioning that relationship merely led to more curious questions than they cared to answer in most circumstances. Letting listeners come to their own conclusions was easier, required much less explanation, and only rarely led to unpleasant complications.

"Ah, welcome, welcome, Doctor Starr, is it?" Goray shook hands with the Doctor, who then glanced at Jenny behind his back and shrugged. Starr was as good as Smith. The other two picked up on the clue, and followed suit, and the Starr family was born.

The Governor called for refreshments, and led them to the conversational group of couches and chairs at the far end of his spacious office, inviting the Captain to stay, as well. They settled in and had a thoroughly pleasant afternoon, Jenny and the two Serenites (as the locals called themselves) by turns catching up, and giving the newcomers an armchair introduction to the planet.

Jenny forbore any mention of her pregnancy, but told their delighted hosts of the family's intention to remain on Serenity for a number of years, as they were tired of interstellar traveling.

"Wonderful! Absolutely dancing!" cried Goray with infectious enthusiasm. "We must find you a house at once! Captain, you will help search, as well."

"Of course, Governor. And in fact... I may already know of a place." He turned to the visitors. "What sort of area are you interested in? Here in the city? A village? Countryside? A farm, or a shop?"

"In or near a village, but not too far away from Crescent City; a large house with a bit of land around it for some privacy would be ideal," the Doctor replied, laying out the parameters they had decided on earlier in the TARDIS kitchen.

The Captain grinned back. "Then I do indeed know of the perfect place. My late grandfather's house, outside Rockyford Village, just twelve vayards north." A vayard, Jenny had told them earlier, was a bit longer than a mile. "It's been sitting vacant for three years, since his death, waiting for me to retire from the Guard – which won't happen for decades yet. It would be my honor to offer it to you for the duration of your stay here, at no charge. No, I insist," he held up a hand to forestall their objections. "The least I can do for the Colonel. If not for her, I shudder to think what our land and our lives would be like today."

"Well, we'll talk about it, after we see the house," temporized Jenny.

Bender merely smiled.


	4. Still Life with Rose

_**A/N:** Of course I'm describing my own dream house here. If you'd like to see my inspiration, google Simon Dale's Hobbit House._

* * *

**Still Life with Rose**

_Back in the Baby TARDIS, Pete's World:_

Joshua leaned back in his Captain's chair and grinned at his parents. "I tell you what, _one look_ was all it took. All four of us instantly fell in love with that house. It was _gorgeous_. Mama Rose called it a storybook cottage, in a storybook village, on a storybook world."

"'Mama Rose'?" asked her twin, grinning back.

"Didn't feel right to call her 'Mum', but I couldn't just call her 'Rose', either. 'Mama' was a good compromise."

"What was the cottage like?" put in Corin.

"I've got some pictures around here somewhere; I'll dig them up later. It was large for a cottage, several bedrooms off of one huge great room combining the kitchen and living areas, but no other word fits. It was literally built into the side of a hill, and then the hill was pulled over it – turf and flowers on the roof. It almost looked like it had been grown, rather than built. I don't think it had a single right angle anywhere in it. For all that, though, it was the typical rural architecture of the planet – that part of it, anyway. We never did much traveling to other parts. Loved it too much right where we were at.

"The place was called Larrik Hollow – larriks are a local songbird, brilliant colors and heavenly songs – and it was nestled into a private little glen chock full of larriks just a short walk from the village. There was a huge garden along the bottom of the glen – none of us knew a thing about gardening at first, but we made friends with several villagers who taught us everything we needed to know, and the garden had been so well tended for so many decades that it practically tended itself. We even had some small farm animals over the years. We fed ourselves quite wonderfully, even learning a hundred different ways of preserving food for later."

He grinned again. "What clinched it for the Doctor, of course, was the grove of Serenite banana trees out back - they're much bigger than ordinary banana plants, actual trees with thick trunks. He was in heaven. Stretched a hammock out between the two biggest ones and put down roots. Whenever we couldn't find him, that's where he'd be." His grin softened in memory. "Seriously, though. It was a slice of paradise. The planet actually lived up to its name, Serenity. The Doctor has said numerous times that those years were without a doubt the happiest ones of his entire life. He recently told me that looking back, it was like living in an impressionist painting. 'Still Life with Rose', he called it."

"Somehow I can't imagine the Doctor becoming a farmer, though – or even simply staying in one place that long," commented his twin, who should know better than anyone.

"Oh, he had his restless moments, but Mama Rose was always able to settle him back down. Besides, he did have a full-time hobby, and it wasn't farming. Care to take a guess?"

"Besides growing this baby?" Corin gestured at the ship around them, and Joshua nodded. "No idea."

"He took a job teaching science at the local school. 'Right back to 1913", he'd say, 'only this time without anyone hunting me.' He loved it, too, once he zeroed in on the right range of science to teach them. The kids became _his_ kids – and he was a fantastic, and very popular, teacher."

"What about Jenny's baby?" asked Rose.

Joshua grinned, looking from one to the other, drawing it out several beats. "You mean Brandon?"

"Ah-HA!" crowed Corin. "So _that's_ who this mysterious 'Brandon' is? Jenny's son?" Josh nodded. "So he travels with you, then? He's a Time Lord?"

"He's _part_ Time Lord," his son clarified. "He's got many of the abilities and traits, but not all of them. A better time sense than your average human – no offense, Mum – but not as good as you or I. And he's aging extremely slowly, but we don't know if he'll be able to regenerate – and frankly, none of us are eager to test that particular ability."

"I should think not," replied Rose. "But I'm surprised he didn't come with you on this trip."

"Oh, he did – just not the last leg. He's visiting his father at last. John's time period was our first stop; we hit it about 8 years after the last visit, and stayed a couple of weeks before I came on back to here. He'll send me a message when he's ready to go."

"So John knows the truth?"

"Yes, they were introduced properly. We even met his two kids – and his lady friend. Not married yet, and I haven't peeked to find out if they will. But she's a good match, I think: smart, well-educated, and very kind. I quite liked her, and him – and so did Brandon. They're getting along well, at least when I left."

"Good. I'm glad for John – for all of them." Rose was happy to put to rest that nonsensical bit of worry about a distant descendent whose life she had only briefly touched. She turned back to her son. "What about you, though? What did you do during those years?"

"Me? I hired out as a farmhand, believe it or not, at least part of the time. Learned a whole lot about tending the land, Serenity style. There was a lot of barter and communal living there; Jenny took her turns in the community nursery while Brandon was that age, and Mama Rose worked in the garden co-op, especially after she got good with those preserves. Took a few prizes at the fair, even. But then, we had the biggest berry patch in the area; couldn't help but get good with all that to work with. Donal – that's Captain Bender – never would accept any rent money, but we paid him in jams and produce, and other goods, and by simply giving him a holiday home and surrogate family whenever he wanted to get away from the city. He never married, for whatever reason.

"And we all worked in the garden, or around the house and fields, and took care of Brandon, and the animals, and the baby TARDIS. That was a whole other story, how we got the ship to graft it onto – I'll tell you that one later, too.

"But a good chunk of time was taken up with the Doctor's informal lessons, teaching Jenny and me – and Mama Rose, too, and Brandon when he got older – everything he could about... everything. Everything he remembered from his days at the Academy on Gallifrey. Everything about being a Time Lord. Everything about history, and science, and all the ways people have tried to get along with each other – or not.

"It was such a peaceful time, in such a wonderful place. The village had several taverns, which always had musicians playing, as well as great food, and there were concerts, and market days, and festivals happening constantly. Like living in a painting, like the Doctor says. For well over two decades, only three momentous things happened." He held up his fingers as he ticked them off. "One: Brandon's birth, of course – although actually that went very smoothly. Two: that mysterious trip away in the fifteenth year, maybe to here?

"And three... well, three was something altogether different. And quite terrifying."

He took a deep breath, and settled in again. "In our eighth year on Serenity, people started disappearing – and then suddenly _everything_ disappeared. The house. The entire village.

And Brandon."


	5. Trouble

**Trouble**

Rose rushed into the house, fresh from her stint at the co-op market, visibly disturbed. "Doctor? Doctor!" she cried, rushing to his arms as he stood up from the broad kitchen table.

"What is it, love? What's wrong?" Her uncharacteristic behavior had him instantly concerned.

She didn't answer directly, pulling away sharply to look around. "Josh? Jenny? Brandon?" she called loudly when she didn't see them immediately.

"Here," Jenny answered, just coming in the side door from the barns, seven-year-old Brandon trailing behind.

"And here," added Joshua, poking his head around his bedroom door frame. "All present and accounted for, melora," he added, teasing her with the Serenite version of "madame".

Rose wasn't teasable, though, blowing her breath out in a relieved sigh, shoulders sagging. She turned back to her bondmate. "The oddest thing happened this afternoon, and I've been obsessing about it. When I came though the door just now and it was so quiet... I panicked. I'm sorry."

"What happened?"

"I was helping Samda at the market, was just bagging up some kirian nuts, when I turned around and she just wasn't there, as if she'd disappeared into thin air. I looked around the store for her, but she was nowhere to be found. Then I asked Michel and Zoren if they'd seen her – and they both said 'who?' as if they'd never heard of her. I'm serious. It was as if she'd been wiped from their memory completely – and all three of them have lived here for years! We got busy then, so I couldn't pursue it, but it's been bothering me ever since."

If she expected the Doctor to ease her worries, she was mistaken. Instead, his eyes grew round, and he drew his head back, alarmed. "When did this happen?"

"About two hours ago." That answer didn't seem to help. "Doctor?"

"Kriston didn't appear for the last class. I could have sworn I saw him walk in, but then he wasn't there. And when I asked the other kids if he'd gone home early, I got the same kind of reaction. I put it down to them just being kids – and getting ready for the quiz. But that was also about two hours ago." None of them had to be reminded that Kriston was Samda's son – they were good friends with that family.

Jenny turned to her son. "Brandon? Was Kylie in school today?" The serious-looking boy nodded, eyes round. "And this afternoon? Did you walk home with her like always?"

Now he shook his head. "No. I waited at the door, but she didn't come out, so I came home alone."

"All three missing? What about Decker? Anyone seen him today?" The Doctor named the father of the family. When the others shook their heads, he turned on his heel and strode for the door. "All of you, stay here, I'll be right back." He didn't have to give his destination; their friends lived only a short distance away.

He was back in a few minutes, obviously shaken. "Not only is the family gone, their house is gone. Just vanished, as if it had never been built. The trees we cut down to build it are still growing in place." All of them had pitched in with the communal house-raising a few years before.

He walked back to his chair at the table and sat heavily, and the rest of the family silently took their usual spots.

It was Jenny who broke the silence. "How could they have vanished like that? Out of memory, too?"

"Somebody's messing with the time stream. Changing history." The Doctor frowned, concentrating.

"Changing it so they never moved here?"

He looked at his daughter sharply. "You knew Decker before, didn't you?"

"Yes, he was one of the guards that held off the Devron Group's little invasion force."

"I wonder if that's what's being changed. Something back then."

Rose was shaking her head. "I don't know much about this timey-wimey stuff, obviously, but... if history is being changed, and the people around us, like Michel and Zoren, are having their memories changed, why aren't _our_ memories changed, too? Why do _we_ remember Decker and Samda and the kids?"

"Because we're Time Lords," her husband answered, and at her raised eyebrows, added, "and you're bonded with one, remember? You remember because I do."

"OK," she conceded, "but then, if things were changed _back then_, whenever _back then_ is – was – then why did we see the change _today_? Why was Samda there right in front of me one second, and gone the next? What's special about _today_?"

The Doctor took a deep breath. "Good question. _Excellent_ question, in fact. Why today? Anybody?" He looked at his two star pupils, neither of which had an answer, so he turned his mighty intellect loose on the puzzle, pleased to have something juicy to sink his mental teeth into. "Why today, why today? Is it? No! Yes! No! Yes!" Only Rose had witnessed his manic split-personality style of arguing with himself before and grinned indulgently at him; the others around the table looked like they were seriously considering calling the lunatic asylum, before he made up his mind and shared his results with them. "It's because whoever is pulling the strings on this history change did so from right now. Either they – or whoever they sent to do the dirty work – popped backwards to their target time _from_ that very moment, or returned _to_ it – I'm not sure which." He grinned triumphantly at the table, sitting back to collect their accolades.

Which weren't coming. "You're not sure? There's actually something you don't know about time travel?" his daughter scoffed.

He looked wounded. "You remember a few weeks ago, I mentioned something called Zen Physics?" She nodded. "_This_ is Zen Physics. You remember why I only mentioned it?"

She shook her head that time, but Josh had the answer. "Because you failed it."

"Right. That's why I never graduated from the Academy. Because this stuff just went right over my head – at the time. I wonder how I'd do at it now?" he added thoughtfully, then shook it off. "But I'm pretty sure I'm right this time. I can't think of any other reason – even though I don't know how it works."

"OK, so what do we do about it?" Rose asked to get him back on track.

"Do? Nothing!" At her scandalized expression, he added, "Look, right now we have no idea _what_ changed, or _when._ What would you propose we do? All we know is that Samda and Decker and the kids disappeared. It might be something as simple as they decided to move somewhere else instead of here."

"Or they might be dead. The kids might never have been born!" Rose was troubled deeply – Samda was one of her best friends.

"Maybe. But right now, we don't know. Until we have more to go on, there's nothing we can do!"

Even as the words were leaving his lips, it happened. A rumbling roar like a planet-sized freight train split the sky in two, and the five of them were thrown from their chairs by a shock wave blowing right through their walls as if they weren't even there – which suddenly, they weren't. Then, just as quickly, the sound and fury were gone, replaced by an eerie, dead silence.

Coughing and gagging on lungfuls of the choking dust suddenly clouding the air, obscuring everything beyond a few feet of visibility, covering every inch of their bodies within seconds, they picked themselves out of piles of dirt and stood up. Slowly the dust settled in the afternoon sunshine, and they looked out upon a scene so completely transformed that the Doctor thought fleetingly they had been transported somewhere, then dismissed it. They hadn't moved, but the landscape certainly had. Their house, the barns, the garden – everything was gone. Only the TARDIS, until a moment ago hidden within the barn, remained, a hundred feet away along the edge of a humongous pit. They were standing near the edge of a rock quarry, stretching away into the empty distance where the village should have been.

Suddenly Jenny's voice rang out. "Brandon! _Brandon!" _The others whirled around, only then realizing there were only the four adults standing together. The boy was nowhere in sight – and there was nowhere for him to hide on the bare ground. Jenny began panicking, calling for her son, her voice rising to almost a scream. "_BRANDON!_" She looked back at the others, who were staring at her, stock-still. "What are you staring at? Help me find him!"

"Jenny... Look at yourself!" her father whispered.

"What?" Jenny held her hands in front of her face. They were... different. She put them to her face, feeling subtle changes in cheekbones, chin; then reached behind her and pulled at suddenly too-short hair, much shorter than her shoulder-length style a moment ago. She managed to get a strand before her face, and gasped at the chocolate-brown color. Gaping, she turned back to the Doctor, shaking her head, begging him silently not to say it.

But not even now, steeped in horror, could he stop running his gob. "You've regenerated. Whatever happened back then, whatever they changed, you died and regenerated. And Brandon wasn't born."


	6. Rewind

**Rewind**

"Everyone into the TARDIS! Right NOW!" the Doctor ordered, ratcheting the panic out of his voice by sheer will. "She'll protect us from any further changes." _I hope._

The newly brunette Jenny was still gaping at him. "Brandon..."

"Jenny, _he's not here._ I can't sense him anywhere. Let's get inside, and we'll use the TARDIS sensors to make sure." He pulled his daughter into his arms, turning her resisting frame and almost dragging her along to the blue box, Joshua and Rose scurrying in behind. The Doctor gently pushed her into the jump seat, then spun around to the console terminal, calling up the scans. He ran them twice, three times, but nothing. He turned and simply shook his head, wordlessly, and Jenny collapsed into Rose's arms, weeping.

"We have to find out what happened, what's changed." Turning back to the console again, he switched over to the worldwide infonet. No sooner had the portal's initial splash screen appeared than he looked over his shoulder again. "Jenny? What was the name of that interplanetary company you held off on your first visit?"

Still weeping, she couldn't answer. "Was it Devron?" he prompted, and then she nodded. "Shit." That uncharacteristic oath made everyone turn and stare at him, even shocking Jenny. He moved to one side, letting them see the screen.

_Devron Serenity Mining Corporation_ was emblazoned upon it. "Well, I guess we've got a good idea _when_ the changes occurred in history," commented the Doctor. Using both keyboard commands and his mental link with the ship, he sent her on a computer search for all the information she could find about the period of conflict some seventeen years earlier.

"What about Baby?" asked Joshua, concerned. "I can still feel her, and she doesn't feel any different, but she's not as aware of her surroundings, or as articulate as her mama."

The Doctor quickly scanned the connections between the two TARDISes, then nodded back. "She's fine, unchanged. Still sitting at the spaceport. I think we can safely leave her for a while." They had begun the process of grafting the Baby onto her spaceship housing a couple of years before, but since they had no place to park it on their property, were renting a long-term mothball dock at the spaceport outside Crescent City.

He turned back to Jenny and Rose on the jump seat, taking his daughter's hands in his. "Sweetheart, I know this is hard. But if we're going to get him back, we need your help. You need to concentrate." She nodded, working to stifle her sobs. "I need you to tell me everything you can remember about what happened during Devron's attempted takeover."

It was another minute or so before she was able to start speaking. "You remember I told you they were trying to get mining permits, but had to get changes or exemptions to the Charter, first? They had tried to bribe Goray, and several other officials, and I think a couple of minor ones accepted them. Of course Goray didn't. He was also up for reelection as Regional Governor that year. Everything happened in the leadup to that election."

She paused, taking several deep, calming breaths, racking her brains to dredge up the memories. "Devron Group also sent in a bunch – more than four dozen – of agitators to stir things up. They had two purposes: to run their mouths and try to sway people's opinions, get them stirred up about the obscene profits Devron were promising but that the government were supposedly blocking, and they also started a crime wave, robberies and muggings, and worse, to try to destabilize things even further by turning citizens against the government.

"A week before the election, things came to a head. They staged a demonstration, which almost turned violent, but our men were able to prevent the worst. There was a standoff right there in Fountain Plaza, our men in a skirmish line, against the agitators and locals they'd gotten on their side, throwing rocks and small bottle bombs. We held them off but didn't overreact for several hours, until reinforcements from the Planetary Defense Force," she named the small, little-used standing army, "arrived and marched through. They arrested everyone, and we were able to weed out the infiltrators."

She took another deep breath. "We got confessions from their leaders and published them. Three days later, Goray was going to give a speech about it in Fountain Plaza. Just minutes before he arrived, a bomb went off on the platform, killing one man – " Her voice shook and she closed her eyes for a moment, then visibly forced herself on. "– and injuring several others. We never proved who had planted it, but it shocked everyone to their senses, and four days later Goray won reelection in a landslide, and the pro-Devron measures on the ballot were defeated by the same margin."

The Doctor's eyes apologized for what he had to do, even as he gently posed the question. "Who was killed?"

She swallowed hard. "His name was Jordan Kashere. He..." She broke off, shaking her head.

"How long had you been involved?"

"Several weeks." She took a deep breath. "He wasn't involved in the mess. He was an offworlder, like me – a small, independent trader, looking for goods to carry."

"What was he doing there on the platform, then?"

She shot him an outraged look. "What are you saying, Dad?"

"Nothing. I'm just trying to figure out what happened then, what's changed now. We have to look at everything and everybody. That's all." He dropped it, and turned to Joshua, who'd taken his place at the console. "How does that story stack up against what's in the system now?"

"Not very well. The TARDIS has found two different versions of the same events – one official version from the Devron Group's sites, and one from some independent reporting agencies. Those two agree on the events, but not the causes, of course – and neither match Jenny's." He tapped back several screens, finding the one he wanted. "There are three main events, each of which turned out differently.

"One: the demonstration turned into a full-scale riot, with several of Jenny's soldiers shot and killed – including Decker, and also a number of civilian casualties. The riots continued for several days, all over the city, with an incredible amount of damage done – injuries, looting, destruction.

"Two: the riots were still continuing when the Governor was to make a speech, attempting to calm things down. There was a bomb, but it went off during his speech, killing him and four others, and injuring dozens." He looked over his shoulder at the others. "Colonel Starr is a question mark – some reports have her listed as killed, others as wounded."

The Doctor nodded, concerned but his guess confirmed. "That would have been when you regenerated," he told Jenny, who was trying not to be shocked. Rose tightened her hug around her shoulders. "And three?" he asked Josh.

"Three is the election. The results here are opposite what they were before. Tannert was dead, of course, but his Lieutenant Governor, who stepped in, was defeated, and Devron's measures won. Not by landslides, but by comfortable margins. The independent sources say it was because of the riots – that he'd lost control of the situation, and people reacted. The mob won."

The Doctor began slowly pacing around the console. "So the turning point is the demonstration-slash-riot. How did it turn violent? Why weren't the troops able to keep control? Why didn't the army get there in time? Were they delayed?"

Suddenly he halted, shaking his head. "But even more important than _what_ was changed, is _who_ changed it, and _how?_ Remember, these aren't just random things, odd occurrences. Someone deliberately changed history, from right now in _this_ time period. We saw the results. So who are we up against?"

"Follow the money," murmured Rose, heretofore silent.

"What?" her husband looked at her sharply, and she smiled.

"It's an old Earth saying, love. Follow the money. Who benefited? Who paid off who? Who's on top now, when they weren't before?"

The Doctor gave her a manic grin. "Yes!" he cried, striding over to give her a smooch. "I knew I kept you around for some reason!" He darted away from her playful swat and back to the console. "Current events, Joshua. Who's in charge? Who got richest off this deal?"

"Besides Devron Group as a whole? Nobody. All those obscene profits they promised never made it out of their own coffers. All the local Serenites were forced to move out of the way of the new mines, and never did get any compensation. They're environmental refugees, squished into the neighboring provinces."

"What about the Governor? Who won, instead of Tannert's Lieutenant?"

Joshua clicked around till he found the results. "A Serenite named Petron Diener. He seems to have made some money off of the contracts, but not enough to be the brains. More like a lackey who was paid off. Hold on..." He clicked further. "Right. Here's a report from an investigative reporter, who seems to be in hiding now. They say that the one person who most benefited is Junia Tonas, the local executive for Devron. She's made billions of credits, both over and under the table. But the reporter couldn't find any trace of her _anywhere_ before the crisis here. She didn't exist, not even in the Devron Group."

"Got a picture?" asked the Doctor. Joshua nodded, and called it to the screen, which the Doctor then swiveled around towards Jenny. "Recognize her?"

Jenny shook her head. "No. You're right, Diener was just a hack, on Devron's payroll. But no, he didn't have the brains to pull anything major off. Whoever this Tonas is, she's who we need to be looking at." _Not Jordan_, she didn't add aloud.

"Wait a minute," Rose piped up again. "Aren't we forgetting something?" The other three turned to her, quizzical. "We're talking about _time travel_ here. I've never heard of anyone able to do that except you Time Lords. And the Time Agency Jack used to belong to," she added, remembering as she spoke. "Who were they?"

"Time police, as far as I know," replied her husband. "I never had anything to do with them, but I was vaguely aware of them. They were a very small outfit, not active for very long in their home time period. And they were supposed to be preventing this kind of thing, or fixing it, not doing it themselves. But by extension, that means the people they were policing _were_ doing this kind of thing. There have been a number of individuals and groups through history who managed to figure out time travel. Whoever we're looking for is more apt to be on the side of the hunted, not the Time Agency hunters."

"Were they active here and now?" asked Joshua.

The Doctor shrugged. "I have no idea. They could have been anywhere, anywhen. But you're right, we need to keep an eye out for them."

"Does that mean we're going back to the crisis?" asked Rose.

"Well, we're certainly not going to find out what happened, or change it back to how it's supposed to be, from this time period, are we?"

^..^

They landed off the plaza again, in the same small alley where they'd first made planetfall, three days before the demonstration-slash-riot, as the Doctor termed it. He turned to Jenny and took both her hands again.

"Jenny, sweetheart, please listen to me. I have to ask something of you, something that's going to be very difficult, I know. Stay here. Stay inside the TARDIS. There's already one of you running around out there. If you should run into yourself, even if you don't do anything actively, the chances of a major paradox are astronomical. You know the rules against crossing your own timeline. And we've already got enough going on. OK?"

She hesitated, mutely protesting, then nodded, unhappy but able to understand the necessity.

"Thank you." The Doctor gently kissed her forehead, then turned to his bondmate. "Rose, I want you to stay here, too, for now. Joshua and I are going to see what we can find out about various people, and the general mood, as well. We'll be back shortly. Jenny, where can we find Jordan?" She took a sharp breath, startled and angry, but he rode over her. "I know what you said, but he's a cipher – an unknown. We need to find out more about him, if only to eliminate his involvement."

She balked another second, then gave him the hotel her lover had been staying at, and the two spies left. Rose and Jenny spent the next couple of hours searching through the infonet for any tidbits they could find, building up a picture of the current status. Nothing had happened yet, apparently, to send the time stream in either direction.

Suddenly the door flew open again, and the Doctor strode swiftly in, followed by a bewildered Joshua. One look at the elder Time Lord's face and both women sprang up from the jump seat, alarmed. His mind was blocked, held under tight control so as not to give anything away, but his face, although empty of expression, was as white as a sheet.

"We've got a major problem. I know," he added swiftly, forestalling Jenny before she could bring up Brandon – wasn't that problem _enough?_ "I know. What I mean is, we've got another even _bigger_ problem. The situation just got a hundred times more complicated." He walked around to the terminal again, pulling out his sonic screwdriver and pulsing it, sending something to the TARDIS computer. A couple of button taps, and whatever it was appeared on the screen. He turned the screen so the women could see it.

"Jordan!" said Jenny. At the same moment, Rose cried out, too. "Jack!" They glanced swiftly at each other, puzzled, then back to the Doctor, who nodded gravely.

"Jordan Kashere is Jack Harkness."


	7. Timeweave

**Timeweave**

Jenny was utterly stunned. "Jordan is Jack Harkness? _My_ Jordan?" She'd heard enough stories about the rogue Time Agent through the years to know this painted her former lover in an entirely different light. That he wasn't who she thought he was, was the heartbreakingly very least of it. "Are you _sure?_" she whispered, voice cracking.

The Doctor nodded, but she pressed on, trying to sidestep the awful truth. "It's not just a resemblance? I've known lots of people who look alike..." Her voice trailed off at his expression; half compassion, half bleak knowledge.

"No," his quiet, sure voice compounded the agony. "I know Jack. I _spoke_ with him. It's him."

Rose broke in then. "But, he can help us, then, can't he? Won't he?"

The Doctor shook his head. "_He didn't know me._ And he wasn't a fixed point. This Jack hasn't been changed yet. Rose, this is the old Jack, from before he ever met us. Which means..." He took a deep breath and forced the next words. "If he dies in that bomb blast six days from now, he never will meet us. And NONE of us will be here now."

He rubbed his face with both hands, taking another deep breath. "We don't have just _one_ alternate reality staring us in the face here. We've got at least two. And I don't have a clue how we can get to the one we want, where all of us live, even Jack, _and_ bring back Brandon." He sagged suddenly, leaning heavily against the console. "I just don't know."

"Then what good are you?" came a ragged whisper. They turned and stared again at Jenny, who came unglued before them, tears streaming down her face. "What good are you? You've ruined my life! You've taken away everything I ever had that was good, you took my _son_, and you can't give him back, and you made me this freak like you, and now I don't even look like myself any more! And now... just to top things off, you've gone and taken my memories of the only man I ever loved, and ruined them!" She was half-screaming now, and she suddenly unfroze, launching herself the three steps to the Doctor with fists raised. She brought them crashing down on his chest, and for a moment he simply stood there, arms down, not trying to ward her off. He'd never had a clue that she'd been that much in love once, she'd never told him.

Then, as she raised her fists to hit him again, he suddenly reached out and grabbed them, bringing her arms down again to hold gently but firmly between their bodies. "Jenny! I said I don't know now, but I swear on everything I hold dear, which includes you, that I will find a way to bring back your son. My grandson. I swear it, Jenny. I'll make it right. I'll set everything right."

She shook her head, wild with grief. "You can't set everything right. You _can't_. You can't give Jordan back to me now. Even if he lives, he's Jack. My Jordan is gone – he never was."

Rose again broke into the silence that followed. "How can it be Jack, if he died in the bomb?"

"I don't know," replied the Doctor, still holding Jenny. "Are you sure he died?" he asked her hesitantly, not wanting to pour salt in her wounds.

It didn't work. She glared at him even more fiercely, heart breaking all over again. "I _saw_ it. The bomb literally _blew him to pieces_. I _saw_..." she couldn't go on. Sobbing, she ripped her arms out of his hands, and stumbled to the doorway, running blindly down the hallway into the TARDIS and away. Just away.

Joshua, standing mute witness to the scene from the other side of the console, made to go after her. The Doctor heard him take a step, and without turning told him, "let her go." Joshua glared at his back, but then caught Rose's eyes beyond; she backed her husband. Deciding she knew more about being female than he did, he stopped, but he stared at the doorway, empty now of Jenny's retreating back, sighing heavily. She'd always be his first love, and such things are never truly forgotten, but he'd long moved past it, living with her as brother and sister like they had for eight years now. That didn't mean he didn't still care deeply about her, though, and her agony now cut hard across his young heart.

Rose stepped across to put her arms around the Doctor, and they held each other for a moment, taking and giving comfort. She looked into his face. "I don't understand. How can it be Jack, if he died? Will die?"

"It means we must be the product of a tampered time stream already." He sighed heavily, echoing Joshua. "Bloody Zen Physics."

"What's Zen Physics? I missed that lesson, professor."

"It's what I used to call Advanced Temporal Physics in the Academy – the class I failed. Time stream splits, time loops, alternate realities, how they're caused, how to prevent them, et cetera. All that mind-bending wibbley-wobbley timey-wimey stuff."

"But I thought you were good at that."

"Me? No. I'm just wingin' it, makin' it up as I go along. Someone like Romana, now, she'd be able to tell you _precisely_ what was going on and why, down to the temporo-atomics."

"Oh." With nothing more to say, she simply leaned against him, putting her head on his shoulder. If _he_ couldn't figure it out, what use a mere mortal?

Joshua, however, was no mere mortal. The Doctor's words had sent his thoughts flying back past his first meeting with Jenny, to another time puzzle, another bomb, another stunning, intriguing Time Lady. "Doctor..." he began slowly. "I have an idea."

"Stars know we could use one," the Doctor replied. He turned, pulling Rose around with him, and looked hopefully at Josh. "What is it?"

"Remember the Eye of Harmony? The vortex?" The Doctor nodded. "Remember how I – how Romana and I, I mean, used the vortex to follow our own progress into and out of the chamber at the different times?"

"How _you_ did it, you mean. Romana was only following your lead. What about it?"

"Didn't you say there's a similar bit of vortex in the heart of the TARDIS – this TARDIS, that hasn't formed yet in Baby?" His listener nodded again. "Then if I looked into the heart, into the vortex, maybe I could use it the same way. Maybe I could see and hear the different time streams, and separate them out. Maybe I could see how to make it all work out."

The Doctor nodded again, slowly. "That might work. If you can pinpoint the nexus – the action or moment that created – will create – each different alternate reality, maybe we can work out a plan around them." He took a deep breath, and silently asked the ship if she was willing to go along with the idea, getting an exited flash of playful purple in return. "OK. We'll do it." He turned to Rose, still in his arms. "_You_ are _not_ going to look." His tone brooked no opposition.

She gave him a mock-innocent look, her tongue tip peeking out at him insouciantly, and didn't bother to reply. He moved his hands to her hips and walked her backwards, placing her rear end firmly on the jump seat, then relented, giving her a quick but passionate kiss. "Please? No Bad Wolf – not today."

"Go on," she replied with a little laugh, pushing him off and settling back into the seat. "I can watch from here, yeah?"

'Yeah. But _don't_ look too closely at the light." He gave her a last peck on the forehead, and swung back, striding quickly around to the far side of the console. He beckoned Joshua over to the right spot, turning him so he faced the console, and stood behind him, his hands lightly resting on the young man's shoulders. "When you're ready."

Joshua closed his eyes and took several deep, calming breaths, stilling his thoughts. "Ready," he murmured. The Doctor sent the go-ahead to the ship, who obligingly opened the panel, and the incredible, sparkling golden energy began seeping out, whispering towards Joshua's face. He opened his eyes at last when he felt the tingling on his eyelids and in his mind, simply watching the wispy patterns at first, absorbing the energies and flavors.

(_Oh, sure, you make it easy for __him__, _thought Rose, ruefully amused. _Why couldn't you be so nice for me, eh?_ She thought she heard a whispered _Sorry_ cross her mind, but it was gone before she could grab it. She blinked. Was the TARDIS actually listening to her, and replying? A slow smile crossed her lips, and she decided to keep her delightful secret.)

Joshua's mind was expanding, reaching out to the songs and patterns of time and life he heard constantly, grasping them and understanding them more clearly than ever before. He simply drifted for an endless moment, anchoring his position in the center of Now and Here. Then he reached out mentally, his hands physically mimicking his mind, and began tracing and weaving intricate patterns of vortex light in the air before him. The Doctor's life thread was the most distinctive, and he watched it weave in and around the tight knot of possibilities at the center of the tapestry, then picked out Jenny's, and Rose's, and even his own.

The four threads came out of the knot in several places, leading off into different directions; some together, some separate. He touched each one, looking for the direction he wanted, but wasn't sure which one it was. He found the brightest, strongest rope and peered along it, noticing how Rose's thread seemed to weave itself into the Doctor's until it was inseparable, though he could see flashes of its colors, an appropriately brilliant rosy pink, mixed within the Doctor's multicolor hues stretching far, far into the murky distance. _Well, I guess that's the effect of a Life Bond. Interesting._

He turned around and faced back towards the knot, trying to sink into it and separate the strands. Suddenly it seemed to spring apart, all the various life threads swirling around each other now visibly. He found a dark thread that seemed to enter the knot several times, sometimes touching one of theirs, often running alongside Jenny's thread for long stretches, tiny threadlets reaching out between the two, as if they were trying to become entwined. Was this Jordan-Jack? Probably. At least twice, that thread came to an abrupt halt, drenched in blood and ashes. The bomb. Other times it thinned and wobbled away, weakened and alone.

Joshua realized he was seeing several realities stacked on top of each other and intertwined, and that all of them were possibilities from the moment he stood in. He had to find the nexus, the decision points for each one.

He mentally relaxed and eased back, letting the strands go and simply watching them form their knots again. They slowly spun before him, sparkling and mindless, refusing to behave. Suddenly he became aware of his physical surroundings again with one corner of his mind. "Are you seeing this?" he whispered to the Doctor.

"No," came the murmured reply, not wanting to intrude too deeply and knock him off course. "All I see are strands of light; they don't make any sense. This is all you, Joshua. Find the way."

Again and again he found a strand and followed it into the knots, only to lose it in the tangled mess. Again and again he backed out, or found himself sideways, his vision refocusing on a new set of strands, a new alternate reality. He found a hard little knot and tried to listen in, merging into the thread, only to be assaulted by sights and sounds and smells that he couldn't make heads or tails of, and had to let go again.

Finally, he became aware of the Doctor's hands tight on his shoulders, the Doctor's voice calling to him. "Joshua. Let it go. Let it go. Come out."

He came to himself slowly, seeing the strands of vortex energy he'd woven within the console room dissolve into nothing and wisp away back into the time machine's glowing heart, the panel closing with a soft click behind them. His weary arms sank to his sides, and he almost collapsed, the Doctor catching him and holding him up till he found his feet again.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," he mumbled, mimicking his hero unconsciously. "I couldn't find the way. It's too complicated. There aren't just two or three worlds colliding, there's a dozen, maybe more." He straightened up, letting the Doctor walk him around to the jump seat while Rose hastily made room for him. Finally looking up, he saw Jenny had returned, and was watching uncertainly from the doorway. She gave him a tiny, shy smile. He rubbed his face, then took a deep breath and gave his meager report.

"The only thing I'm sure of is that there are two nexuses. Nexi."

"Nexuses," supplied the Doctor, grinning.

"Right. And I bet you can guess when they are."

"The demonstration, and the bomb at the speech?"

"Right. I couldn't see clearly exactly who did what, or how we can steer things, but somehow we have to keep anyone from dying on those two days. Everyone."

"Even Jordan?" came Jenny's halting, hopeful query. She walked over to the group. "I know... he's Jack. But... Please. Even him?"

The Doctor answered her, pulling her close. "Especially him. He has to live, to come find Rose and me on Earth." He gave her a hug. "We'll find a way, sweetheart."

She hesitated, then hugged him back. "I'm sorry, Dad, for what I said. I don't know what's come over me."

His mouth quirked. "You regenerated. That usually comes with a whole new personality, as well. Usually, though, you have time to ease into it, and get to know the new you. Your bad luck is that you were just dumped into it with no warning, no time." He sighed. "Don't worry. We're going to keep the old you from getting too close to that bomb, too, one way or another. You'll get yourself back, I promise."

"Good. I don't like this me very much." She tried to grin, but it turned sideways into a grimace, instead.

Whatever he was going to reply was cut off by a sudden loud pounding at the front door, shocking all four into staring silence. Nobody ever noticed the TARDIS, the perception filter took care of that.

"Who the devil is that?" the Doctor asked of nobody. He walked down to the door, hesitated, then carefully opened it. Halfway open, it was wrenched out of his hands, and a second later he found himself flat on his back on the grating, rubbing his jaw from a fierce right hook, staring up into the cold, furious face of Captain Jack Harkness.

"_You son of a bitch. Why didn't you ever tell me you were a part of this?_" he hissed.


	8. Review

**Review**

"Jack!" Rose cried out before she could stop herself, and Harkness looked up from the Doctor on the floor, his face morphing from thundercloud to sunrise in an instant.

"Rose! Oh my god, are you a sight for sore eyes! You have NO idea!" He bounded up the ramp and swept her up into his arms, ignoring the two strangers as he swung her around twice before setting her down again and planting a kiss on her lips. "I thought I'd never see you again. Or, wait, when is this? Oh, crap, are we out of synch?"

Rose was staring in confusion. She looked from him to her husband, just pulling himself off the TARDIS floor. "Doctor, this... this is _Jack_."

The Doctor nodded. He hadn't stopped staring at the intruder. "You are NOT the same Jack I just spoke with."

Jack shook his head. "No, I saw you talking to the old me."

The Doctor's jaw dropped. "You're crossing your own timeline?" Jack nodded. "Jack, you KNOW that's forbidden – that's the first law of time travel, one you've quoted to me _many_ times!"

"How else am I going to find out what happened to me during those two missing years? I can't let it go, Doc. I couldn't _ever_ just let it go. It's been eating at me all these decades – centuries. I know something very important happened. I've got to know what."

"The missing years..." the Doctor repeated, understanding. "You mean the other Jack..." he gestured out the TARDIS door.

Jack nodded, and checked his watch for the date. "In about two weeks, he's going to wake up on a freighter, three days out of this spaceport, with two missing years."

"How do you know it was two whole years?" Rose had always wondered about that. "If you're a time traveler, how do you know...?"

"I'm a Fiorellan," he answered, as if that meant something. When it obviously didn't, he added, "We know how old we are." Very oddly, for him, he actually got a bit flustered. "Look, call it... tree rings, OK? Mental tree rings. I woke up with two years worth of them that I didn't have in my last previous memory, and couldn't account for." Obviously changing the subject, a puzzled look crossed his face, and he looked back and forth between the other two. "When are you guys? – in your timelines? How far out of synch are we?"

Rose looked iffy, but the Doctor had an easy answer. "The last time I saw you, I passed you a note in a bar." It was the note introducing him to Alonzo, but he didn't want to say too much, for several reasons.

Jack nodded, understanding the reference. "A lot of water has passed the bridge since then, but that's the last time I saw you, too."

"So there's your answer, Jack," the Doctor went on, rubbing his sore jaw. "I never told you because I didn't know. I'm on this end of history, too."

"Gotcha..." Jack inhaled, then went on. "Sorry about that punch, then, Doc. I'm a bit raw about all this. But if we're still in synch with each other..." His puzzlement grew, and he looked back at Rose. "I thought you were in the other universe."

She grinned. For once, she was the one with the explanation. "I'm a duplicate, too, Jack, of the original Rose. Not the exact same process, but a similar one that duplicated the Doctor that time. And I came back, to be with him."

He started to grin, but it twisted into wistfulness instead. "So happy endings are possible?" he asked softly.

"Sometimes," she answered as softly.

He took a deep breath, but before he could reply, something drew his eyes beyond her, to the other occupants of the console room. A cute brunette had backed up towards the hallway door, both hands held tightly over her mouth, tears streaming down her face, staring at him with tragic eyes. Once he saw her, he couldn't seem to tear his eyes away.

"Jack," said the Doctor in a sad, quiet voice. "This is my daughter, Jenny."

"Jenny?" The name caught his attention, but he didn't look away. He tried to blow it off, still staring. "Heh. Another Jenny."

"No, Jack. Not another one. _She's my daughter._" That did pull his eyes around, and he looked piercingly at the Doctor, before understanding dawned. The Doctor nodded. "She's regenerated."

Jack turned swiftly back. "Jenny? You're..." he motioned vaguely towards the TARDIS door, and she nodded, not dropping her hands. He took a very deep, shuddering breath. She couldn't decipher his look. He walked slowly over to her, stopping just a foot away, an embrace away, but his arms stayed stubbornly at his sides. Voice low, he said hesitantly, "I _don't remember_ what happened – what's going on out there... Were we...?"

Jenny swallowed hard, choking back tears, and lowered her hands a bare inch. "I thought so. I thought I knew you. I mourned you for _years..._"

Diverted from feelings to words, his head jerked slightly. "You thought... something's going to happen out there, and you thought I died?"

She shook her head, almost violently. "You _did_ die. I saw the whole thing."

The Doctor spoke up behind him. "Jack, we've got a major paradox situation here. Not just one, but several different alternate futures seem to be stacked up on top of each other, intersecting in the next few days. One of them has your death – which means _none_ of us will be here. In others, Jenny dies – or regenerates – and if not for her, none of the four of _us_ will be here. We're trying to figure it all out." He sighed. "It sure would have been easier if you could have told us your side."

Finally tearing his eyes away from Jenny's, Jack turned back, echoing the sigh. "I wish I could. You have no idea how much. But I don't have a clue. I searched my room, of course, but I was always careful not to leave anything lying around."

The Doctor pounced, aggravated again. "How can you be so careless, Jack? Coming so close to yourself – you're risking major paradoxes right there! Hell, you may be the reason all this is coming together like this! What if the old you sees the new you?"

"I'm not that stupid, Doc. I've been wearing a shimmer non-stop since I got here last week, set to the man I bought it from, a hundred years ago and half a galaxy away. And I've been very, very careful tailing the old me around, never coming close enough to touch." He shook the Doctor's concerns off. "Tell me what you do know; what's going to happen the next two weeks?"

Quickly, the Doctor outlined the coming events and their variations. "Let me get something straight. You – the old you – " He shook his head, exasperated. "Let's just call him Jordan, OK? Jordan's still a Time Agent, right?"

"As far as I know. I never formally quit, I just never reported in anywhere after I woke up on the freighter. For all I knew, they'd put me on it."

"OK, we know that someone from seventeen years ahead is pulling the strings, changing things so that the Devron Group comes out on top." He'd included what happened to them up ahead in his briefing. "Could it be someone in the Agency? In other words, what side is Jordan on? Is he here to make the changes, or prevent them?"

Jack sighed. "If you'd asked me that before I came here the first time, while I was still an agent, I would have said to prevent them, no question. But now... It wasn't long after this, after I left, that the Agency started to unravel, and was eventually disbanded. The whispers were that it was because of some rogue elements within the Agency, trying to arrange things their way. It's possible that the rot is already there. I might have been told that I was preventing changes, when actually I was making them. If that makes sense."

"It does, but it doesn't quite fit here. The changes we've seen are from good to bad; innocent people dying when they shouldn't have – a _lot_ of people. Would that have been something you would have done in your days as an agent?"

"You mean, was I ever an assassin? Bluntly, yes. But never of innocent bystanders. I can't see any scenario in which I would have done that myself." Jack paused, shaking his head. "I just wish I could figure out why I'm here, what my mission was!"

Joshua had been silent ever since Jack had arrived, listening on several levels. Now he spoke up. "Maybe we can find that out."

They turned to him, Jack only really noticing him for the first time. He didn't _quite_ perk up, but he immediately said "Hi, there."

"_Jack._" came the Doctor's voice, low and intense, and Jack rolled his eyes – and then his whole head. Before he could protest, the Doctor went on. "Every time I ever told you 'not now' – I never meant it. Not like I do this time. _Not now._"

"You don't even know what I'm thinking."

"How could I not?"

"I'm _thinking_ that of all of us, this young man is the one with the best chance of doing exactly what he just proposed: getting close to – Jordan, and finding out what he's up to." He'd decided that talking about the old him in the third person was just easier.

"Exactly," Joshua agreed. "Doctor... it wouldn't even take that much time. All I have to do is get close to him for a few minutes, and I can probably get what we need from his mind."

Jack started shaking his head at that, though. "No, you won't, son. Nobody could read my mind – not then, not ever. Time Agents had the best mental shields ever."

"Oh?" Joshua's brows arched high over amused eyes. "Then who's Zander?"

Jack was gobsmacked. "Who?" he asked weakly.

"The guy I remind you of? And why do I keep hearing church bells?"

Jack's face was comical – he'd not even been consciously aware of the associations the young man had just pulled out of his own mind. His jaw dropped, while Joshua's grin got huge. "Oh-ho!" he cried, then Jack rapidly cut him off.

"OK, OK, I get the point!" he spluttered. "You'll do." He turned to the Doctor, who was trying not to grin too widely. "Like I said. Send him in. He's got the best chance."

Rose stirred into action, stepping close to Joshua. "You're sure you can do this? You'll be OK?"

He smiled down at her, understanding what she was asking. "Just one drink. I'll be fine, Mama Rose." _I can handle one quick encounter with the lecherous old fool._ He looked back at Jack. "Where can I find him right about now?"

Jack checked his watch. "Try the Tavaria Tavern, six blocks south. Don't follow him if he leaves, though, he'll be heading out to dinner with Jenny in an hour or so." Gazing back intently at Joshua, he let his eyes flick sideways at the Jenny standing a few feet away, then back, silently asking. _Find out what __my__ feelings for __her__ really are._

Joshua nodded.


	9. Facing the Past

**Facing the Past**

Joshua pushed open the TARDIS door and scurried inside, pausing to blow out a sigh of relief when he saw the other four still arranged around the console room. "Thank the stars you're all still here!" He walked straight up to the Doctor. "You blew it."

"I what?"

"When you saw Jordan before, you called him 'Jack', and that put him on alert. He's looking for you, and I don't think it's a good thing. Your image in his mind was colored like an enemy, surrounded by danger – danger from you to him, and violence back. I think he's going to try to take you out."

"Why? Slow down and tell it from the top."

"I don't have a lot of information; I only saw him for a few seconds, and that across a crowded room – lots of interference. He came in, looked around for you, and left. He's hunting you. Your image was the primary thing I could read. I got the impression that he IS here on a mission, but he's confused and unsure about it, and upset, trying to delay. He thinks you might have the answers. No, wait... that's not quite right." Joshua sat down on the jump seat, looking inward, sampling the flavors he'd picked up from the other man's mind. "He's feeling pressure from somewhere to finish the job, but he doesn't want to do it, and now he thinks that pressure came from you."

"Like a backup has been sent from the Agency, and he thinks the Doctor is that backup?" supplied Jack.

"Yeah... that could be it." Joshua nodded. "I don't have much more than that. I was trying to see what the mission was, but he left before I got anywhere." He saw the question in Jack's eyes, _Jenny?_, and shook his head slightly, _I couldn't tell._ Jack grunted softly in frustration.

Joshua turned back to the Doctor. "But what I could tell, is that I wouldn't want to be you if he catches you. It's as though..." he paused again, gathering impressions. "... as though all his anxiety and frustration about the mission has become focused on your head, since he ran into you earlier."

The Doctor sighed. "Jack? Do you think he'd help us, if we contacted him directly?"

Jack's eyes unfocused, staring off into the middle distance, as he tried to put himself back so many long years, into his old pre-Doctor, Time Agent mindset. Finally, he shook his head. "Any contact from somebody else claiming to be a time traveler, or having knowledge of him being a Time Agent, and trying to correct or guard history, would automatically be classified as being on the other side, and he'd not cooperate. And if he's suspecting people inside the Agency, or feeling intense pressure to finish the mission, he'll be even jumpier." He focused again, grimacing. "I didn't have a lot of what you'd call friends back then. Not any, in fact. Everyone was a potential enemy. Nobody was an ally." Sighing, he shook his head. "No. I don't think we can count on his cooperation, Doctor. We'd best steer as clear of him as possible, and try to figure things out ourselves."

He took a deep, bracing breath. "You know, I've been thinking, ever since you said it. If keeping the timeline on the right track requires the death of one Jack Harkness in six days, then why not me? I've been dying regularly for the past three hundred years."

"Three hundred? It's been that long?" the Doctor asked. "But, Jack... It's not like that, this time. It's a _bomb_. Jenny saw Jordan get literally get blown to pieces. That's not something you'll come back from. Plus, we can't be sure that the substitution would be sufficient. We just don't have enough information right now."

"Oh." Jack was thoughtful, which looked good on him, even if it was unaccustomed. "You know, there's been many times I've been ready to lay it down for good. Someday it will still come to that." He looked up at his good friends, the best he'd ever had. "If that's what it comes to, though, I can't think of a better reason to die than this." He gave them his old, rakish grin. "How many people get the chance to save an entire universe? More than once, even?"

The Doctor's voice was quiet, intense. "I hope it doesn't come to that, Jack. In spite of the differences between us." He left it then, and rubbed his face with both hands. "Let's table that for right now, and Jordan, too. The first event we need to worry about is the upcoming demonstration. In one scenario, the local constabulary keep the lid on, and it stays relatively peaceful. In the other, it becomes a riot, that spills out into the community and lasts for days. What's the difference? Where's the tipping point?"

"The community itself," put in Jenny. She'd been trying her best to get used to this stranger wearing her lover's face, and thought that she might at least be able to work with him for the crisis - distantly, anyway. She could still see a lot of Jordan in Jack; the personality hadn't changed all that much, only the back story. She gave herself a mental shake, and returned to the business at hand. "In my memory, which we're trying to get back to, right? - in that, the infiltrators didn't get as much traction with the local populace as they wanted. They didn't have very many on their side of the march. From what Rose and I found in the reports while you guys were out earlier, that changed, and in the other timeline, there were hundreds of marchers. _We_ had some bottles and rocks thrown at us. _They_ apparently had guns of some kind, and the first to be killed were my guardsmen, who panicked and fired back."

"So what we need to do in the next three days," mused the Doctor, "is go out and try to keep the infiltrators from gaining converts, and also keep guns away from the demonstration. Who had the guns, do you know?"

Jenny shook her head. "There was no real deep investigation into the affair in the alternate timeline, but my guess is they weren't in the hands of the locals. It just doesn't fit with my knowledge of these people."

"You think the infiltrators brought and used them?"

She nodded. "That's the only thing that makes sense. Don't forget, too, that they were also busy making a crime wave at the same time, to destabilize things further."

"What about the police?"

"They were doing what they could, but they were pretty overwhelmed. This is beyond their experience. Serenity – and Crescent City, in particular – was always a peaceful, law-abiding place till now – at least that's what I was told when I came here."

"All right then. As of now, we're a counter-insurgency force of five. Find the hotspots, speak up or reinforce those speaking against the infiltrators, and also try to identify the leaders of those infiltrators, find the guns and get rid of them. _And_ stay out of Jordan's way – and the old Jenny's." He blew out a breath, then grinned. "Ready?"

"No, sir!" came his wife's response, to his surprise. "You are NOT going out there with a Time Agent gunning for you. Jack may have become a pussycat after he met us, but I'm quite aware of how dangerous he was before that. Even _he's _wary of himself now." She put a hand on his arm, pleading. "Please, love. I don't want to lose you."

"She's right, Doc. It's too dangerous for you out there," put in Jack, while Jenny and Josh nodded support.

The Doctor looked wounded. "Do you really think I'd put myself in that kind of danger?"

"YES!" came the unanimous response, and he pouted harder.

"I'm not that foolhardy. There's other ways of doing things, you know, and we have one example right here!" He turned to Jack. "You think you're the only one who can wear a shimmer?"

A short search through the S crate under the grates netted them an old shimmer controller, shaped, like most, in the guise of a wristwatch. Jack checked it out quickly to make sure it was working, then the Doctor strapped it on.

"We need an image of someone offworld, but who won't arouse suspicion," began Jack, but the Doctor stopped him with a look. Then he turned and grinned mysteriously at Rose, drawing it out, as he pulled his trusty old sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and gave it a dramatic flourish, whirring it at the controller for a moment. Another last leer, complete with waggling eyebrows, and he tripped the control.

Rose and Jack exchanged mystified glances as the distortion field swept briefly over his face and body, then they both did double-takes and burst out laughing.

Standing before them was a face they hadn't seen in decades, but one with which both were, ah, intimately familiar.

The Doctor's ninth face, to be precise.

"How do I look?" he asked.

"Oh, ack!" Rose's reaction wasn't quite what he was hoping for. "Your new voice just doesn't go with the old look!" But she was laughing as she said it, even with tears in her eyes.

"Ah, hold on!" He buzzed the sonic again, and then, clearing his throat, the old northern accent came back. "How's this, then? Better?"

Jack shook his head. "If I didn't know it was a shimmer, I'd swear it was you, Doc!"

"Wait a minute. One last test." The Doctor cleared his throat again, then flashed his old wide toothy smile. "Fantastic!"

Rose stood still suddenly, her hand over her mouth, tears of a different sort starting. She sniffed, then turned to Jack. "You know what we said a while ago, Jack? Well, not only are happy endings possible, but every once in a while, so are second chances." She walked slowly up to the vision of her old Doctor, and reached up with both hands, wrapping them around his neck. "Come here, you. The one thing I never took the chance on doing." And she snogged him thoroughly, to his enthusiastic return.

"I loved you even with this face, you know," she whispered.

"And I loved you, Rose Tyler, from day one," he replied.

"And you two are still cute," put in Jack from the sidelines. "Enough of this. Put on some different clothes before you go out, Doc, but we've got a timeline to save, people!"


	10. Public Opinion

**Public Opinion**

A short time later found the time travelers enjoying dinner in two different popular taverns, selected by Jenny as good targets for their anti-infiltration operations. Rose and the self-disguised Doctor were quietly sharing private memories in one, waiting for it to get busy, while a few blocks away Jenny and Joshua kept a loose eye on a be-shimmered Jack at the bar of another from their table. It was a bit early in the evening yet for any real debates between the customers, but Jack had been getting some licks in, nevertheless, in seemingly idle talk with his elbowside neighbors.

"Why do we want outsiders coming in and telling us how to run our lives?" he asked the laborer drinking the local brew beside him. He'd been around long enough to soak up the local accent, but was quite happy to let the TARDIS take over translations, and his listeners now easily mistook him for one of their own. "We've been doing just fine for a thousand years! Besides, I don't want their money, I make enough for my needs. So does everybody I know. What could they bring in from offworld that I'd want, that I can't get right here already?" Those within earshot nodded agreement, and he had a momentary urge to kick them just to get something going. _This is debate?_

Joshua grinned at Jenny for their companion's frustration, and she returned it, just a bit weakly. "Don't worry," she replied. "It'll heat up soon. Those two over in the corner have been listening closely, and they don't look like locals, for some reason. I'll bet they're Devron men."

Joshua looked around and spotted the pair she meant, and nodded agreement. The men did look somehow out of place, and they were definitely staring at Jack. He looked that way himself, concentrating, and inserted a mental picture of the two into Jack's mind.

His target jerked his head, startled, then covered it with a slap at a nonexistent insect on his neck, using it as an excuse to glance idly around the room. He spotted the men in question and gave his head a tiny nod. A moment or two later, though, he turned the other way and glared at Joshua. _Don't do that again._ Josh grinned back, unrepentant, and went back to his steak-and-potatoes equivalent.

"Have you ever met Jack before?" Jenny asked in a soft, non-carrying voice.

"No, you know I haven't. He was never in the other universe, and I've been with you since I came to this one. But I've certainly heard stories, over the years." He looked up into her troubled eyes. "And so have you." He waited a beat, then asked what she so obviously wanted him to. "What was Jordan like? Was he very different from Jack, as we've seen him today?"

She bit her lip, looking down at her plate. "I've been asking myself that all afternoon."

He waited, but she didn't go on. "And what have you been answering yourself?" he prompted.

She sighed. "Yes and no. It's hard to quantify. Mostly, though..." Finally, she looked up again at her cousin. "Jordan never even looked at anyone else when we were together. Now, though... all I can think of is how much of that was an act? Did I ever really know him? Or was he always like Jack underneath, and just stringing me along for the sake of his mission, whatever it was?" A quick breath, and she made herself ask. "When you read Jordan's mind this afternoon..."

He shook his head, knowing what she wanted. "I tried, but I just didn't have time to get that deep before he left. I'm sorry, Jenny. You've no idea how badly I want to be able to give you an answer, but I just don't have one. This time. I'm keeping my eyes out for him, though, like all of us are. Hopefully, next time I see him I'll be able to dig a little deeper." He studied her for a moment, then made up his mind. "If it makes you feel any better, though... Jack asked me the exact same thing."

She glanced over at the back of their subject's head, then gave an exasperated little sigh. "I don't know if that makes me feel better or not." She turned back and gave Josh a tiny, rueful smile. "But thanks for telling me, anyway." The smile turned into a grimace. "Is this a messed-up situation, or what?" He grinned back, and kindly said nothing.

^..^

Not long afterward, as Rose and the Doctor dawdled over their favorite dessert of Serenite chocolate dribbled over a pile of sweet mixed berries, the public conversation in their tavern was definitely beginning to heat up. A tall, thin man with a scar on his jaw, who they marked as a likely Devron agent, and two supporters who seemed to be locals, worked themselves into a loud argument with several other Serenites opposed to the Devron Group's economic invasion. The Serenites started well, but slowly seemed to be losing ground in the debate, as their opponent got louder and more forceful. The Doctor listened closely, looking for an opening, and before the last berry was gone, he found one.

Scarface was feeling confident. "Anybody who rejects the billions of credits coming our way is a lunatic!"

"Anyone who thinks those billions of credits will actually appear here on Serenity, and make their way into our pockets, has no idea how interstellar commerce actually works!" replied the Doctor. Everyone turned to look at the owner of the new voice, and he leaned forward, ostensibly concentrating on Scarface, but keenly aware of the audience. "Nobody here in this room will ever see a single credit of it, and if you think your life will be improved anyway, you're sadly mistaken! Devron Group exists to make itself rich, not anybody else. The profits won't come here at all."

He had their attention, all right. "How do you know that, melor?" came from the bar.

"History. Go look at any place Devron has started business in. Ask the locals ten years later if they've gotten rich – or if they have a single credit more than they did before. The answer is no. And don't limit it to Devron, either. Ask any group of people, anywhere, any time, that has seen an outside group come in to rape their natural resources and ship them elsewhere. The native populations have never once benefited from that rape, all they've been left with is their ruined land and economies."

Scarface was game. "The fees for the mineral rights – "

"Are paltry at best, and won't make up a thousandth – a _millionth_ – of the damage the mines and quarries will do to our planet. You want to know what's going to happen? Let me lay it out for you." The Doctor reached for the information he'd learned up ahead and began laying it out for his listeners, who had no idea how precisely accurate his 'predictions' were.

"Eight years from now most of the villages around Crescent City will have been destroyed in favor of humongous open-pit mines and quarries. That's your neighbors, friends, and families, pushed off their land and out of their homes they've lived in for generations. Will they be compensated? A few paltry credits, perhaps. But how can you put a value on your entire life? Your entire village? And where will they go? Some of them will come here, squished into newly built, overcrowded, substandard housing thrown up around the outskirts of town – the first tenements ever built on Serenity. But most of them will be forced into neighboring regions, environmental refugees, spilling Somerset's problems across the borders."

"That's not true," broke in Scarface. "Devron's only applying for one small quarry."

The Doctor pounced. "Devron is a gigantic interstellar corporation, who only deals in planetary-sized quantities. One small quarry wouldn't attract a second's attention from a minor mid-level employee. Look at _any_ of their holdings, on _any_ other planet. You won't find anything less than the equivalent of the entire region of Somerset. That's a fact. They're not here to gratefully accept a few crumbs; they won't even be at the table until they have the entire region on their plate. That one small quarry is merely the tip of the wedge."

"Which means thousands of jobs for us!" Scarface started conceding points without even realizing it.

"If you think that, you have no idea how mining is done. The entire process is automated, run by computers that likely aren't even located on the planet. Serenites will be lucky to get a few dozen jobs at most, repairing and maintaining the equipment – but since we have no equivalent machinery here now, even those workers will be imported from offworld. And you can bet that not one single person in the management chain will be from Serenity. Devron will have their own people in place from day one.

"That's no jobs, no villages, thousands of displaced citizens and disrupted lives, and only tiny fees from mineral rights and export fees. What else? Let's talk about food." The Doctor stabbed his fork into the last berry and held it up. "Where does our food come from? From local farms, located all throughout Somerset. But eight years from now, those farms will be destroyed, along with the villages they supported. Where will your food come from then? It will be imported from other regions. Between shipping costs and export tariffs – which will only go up as the people in those regions realize what's going on – food costs will double or triple. And because of the long distances involved, let alone the problems of mass production, the quality will go way, way down. Each and every one of you will be paying much higher costs for much worse food, every single meal. And because of that, prices for every other item for sale across the economy will also rise, and you'll be caught in a never-ending spiral of inflation."

He threw the fork down on his plate in disgust. "But that's not the worst loss, the worst problem. Think about that picture for a moment. Crescent City, overcrowded and alone, set in the middle of a vast chain of open mines and quarries. A blight on the face of this serene, lovely planet. The environment destroyed. Do you really want to start the process of turning Serenity into the next Earth? Do you really want to ruin it, pollute it beyond measure, beyond living? Do you really want to destroy our entire way of life, that's been our treasure for literally a thousand years?"

Scarface had been looking for his own opening, feeling the momentum slipping away. "Mining isn't like that any more!" he protested. "It's completely clean and pollution-free!"

"And now you're really living in a dream world – or spouting outright lies. Mining and rock quarrying have _never_ been pollution-free industries, and never will. It's simply not possible. Even if you somehow managed to extract the target minerals without adding any toxic chemicals or harmful emissions – which is theoretically possible, but has _never_ been done without losing three times as much as the profits realized, and therefore is completely unfeasible commercially – even if you did that, you'd still be left with two humongous problems: the hole in the ground, and the mountain of leftovers – everything other than the mineral you're after. Even if you shoved the mountain into the hole, you've destroyed the landscape in the process, and on the scale of a Devron Group industry, it will take not years, not decades, but _centuries_ before nature could begin to recover from the insult."

Scarface sneered again, getting a bit desperate. "I should have known. You're one of them damned Greenies, afraid of any sign of progress. You want to hold Serenity back in the Dark Ages, for the sake of _Preservation_." He spat out the word as if it were something obscene.

The Doctor stood up, gathering everyone's eyes again. "You're right on one count. I do want to preserve what we have here. Because _some things are worth preserving._ And I believe with all my soul that the Serenite way of life, bound by the Covenant, is one of them." He looked around then, making eye contact here and there. "No, I'm not a native Serenite. I came here eight years ago. And before that, I've traveled to more planets than I can count, and seen everything that can go wrong, countless times. And I stand before you now to say, what we have here is the closest thing to paradise humanity has ever known. _It's worth preserving."_

He stopped for a moment to let that sink in, then went on, turning back to Scarface with a small laugh. "I'm not against progress. And if you had any idea who you're speaking to, you'd know how laughable that idea is. What I am against is _mindless_ progress, progress at any cost. And what the Devron Group will do to this land, _our_ land – because I have no plans to leave, and I consider myself a Serenite now – what Devron will do to our land, our people, our way of life, is as far from _progress_ as it is possible to get. It's not progress, it's regress. It's complete destruction, and devastation, without _any_ redeeming features whatsoever. That mountain of credits you keep blathering on about will never appear, not here. Even if it did, the destruction of our way of life wouldn't be worth it. I'm not selling my home, my friends and neighbors, my _world_ for any amount of credits."

The crowd in the bar could no longer be silent, and they roared their approval for the Doctor's speech. Scarface stared at him for a few moments, then turned and walked out the door, accompanied by jeers. He'd lost this round. But the war was far from over.

^..^

The sun finally set after the long summer day, and as midnight neared, the taverns began to close, their patrons wending their way to home and bed. The five time travelers began making their separate ways back to the TARDIS from their last stops. They'd been mostly successful; although no repeats of the Doctor's mad triumph were to be had, they did feel they'd made some inroads reinforcing those opposed to Devron, and showing support for Governor Tannert.

Rose and the Doctor strolled slowly through the arcade around Fountain Plaza, arm in arm, and turned into the alley where the TARDIS was hidden – and came face-to-face with the barrel of a small pistol. The Doctor instantly moved in between it and Rose, favoring Scarface, for of course it was he, with an intense stare.

"You've got to be joking," he said.

"You talk too much, melor." Scarface managed to infuse the Serenite 'sir' with the same implied insult as any gutter epithet.

"Yeah, that's me, always running my gob," and the Doctor began doing exactly that, shifting his balance slightly in preparation for a lunge at the gun. Unfortunately, said gob prevented him and Rose from hearing the slight footscrape behind them, and the rock in the hands of Scarface's accomplice descended unchecked onto the gabby Time Lord's skull. The last things he knew were the stars in his vision and his wife's scream in his ears.


	11. Riot or Not

**Riot or Not...**

Rose automatically clutched at her bondmate's arm and screamed as he slid senseless to the ground. His continuing presence in her mind told her he was only unconscious, not dead or dying, but it was still a shock. Her brain kicked into overdrive, fed by fury at their assailants, even as one corner of it registered with relief that the shimmer hadn't dissipated and his disguise remained intact. Within three seconds, she'd braced her legs and was preparing to launch a counterattack on Scarface, when suddenly a pair of energy bolts came sizzling out of the darkness further down the alley, and both of the attackers dropped without a sound.

She whirled, gasping, and then went limp with relief at the sight of Captain Jack Harkness holstering his gun and swaggering over. "You've missed me, haven't you – admit it!" he leered.

"I don't know how we ever managed without you, Jack!" she replied, giddy. Then she turned back to the Doctor, as he began to stir, groaning and reaching for his head. She helped him sit up against the green fieldstone wall.

"Owwwww," he complained. He looked plaintively up at Rose. "I got bashed, didn't I?"

"Yup," she answered cheerfully. "Nearly got your head caved in. That's another one you owe Jack, by the way."

"Who's counting?" replied the Captain, grabbing Scarface by the shoulders and dragging him over to his accomplice, one of the two that had been in the tavern with him at the beginning of the evening. There he dropped him, and then grabbed each of the two ruffians by an arm. "Be right back!" he exclaimed, and punching his vortex manipulator with the other thumb, was gone before his audience could react.

"Jack!" cried the Doctor, but it was too late.

"Dad!" "Doctor!" came from behind them, as Jenny and Josh came running back from the TARDIS. "Are you OK?"

"Yeah, I'm all right." He struggled to his feet with their help, then shook them off, gently but firmly. He drew breath to start showering the missing Time Agent's head with imprecations, and was cut off by the man's return in a flash of vortex light.

Alone.

Only slightly less irritated at Jack's ability to keep his feet during time jumps than his impetuous behavior, the Doctor started in directly. "What did you do with them? Where the hell did you take them?"

"Nowhere!" came the grinning reply. "They're right here!" A beat, then he dropped the other shoe. "Two weeks into the future, safe and sound, past the crisis. Even left them the gun. And, no, I didn't kill them. Those shots stunned them, that's all."

Confounded, all four jaws dropped, and then the Doctor began grinning, and then laughing like a maniac. "I like it. I _like_ it! A simple, nonviolent, yet permanent solution. Let's keep doing that with all of them!"

And so they did.

Over the next two days before the demonstration, the busy team managed to corner and send forward eighteen more of the infiltrators, almost halving Jenny's original estimate of their total numbers. They also continued their 'counter-insurgency' tactics, confronting the opposition in taverns and markets and spreading the Doctor's gospel: _Some things are worth preserving._ He hadn't known it at the time, but his initial speech had been captured on a tiny hidden voice recorder by a news reporter quietly watching the scene, who then broadcast it several times the following days, and his catchphrase caught fire. They could almost feel the tide of public opinion turning around them, surging back to the Governor and the Covenant.

They also had several near-misses with Jordan, who kept skulking around trying to figure out what was going on. The Doctor and Jack, in one whispered conversation, seriously considered nabbing him, too, and putting him on ice until after the day of the bomb to keep him safe, but in the end decided they didn't dare, since they still had no clear picture of events. Doing so might throw them into yet another timestream split even further from their own past. Nor was Joshua able to read his mind any deeper, as, miraculously, the young man never came into contact with him again during those days. They didn't see the original Jenny once, but her modern self remembered being busy with her troops, drilling and outfitting them in preparation for the scheduled coming demonstration. The Devron Group's first serious mistake had been announcing the rally well in advance.

When the day finally arrived, Team Doctor (as Jack had mischievously named them, and the name had stuck, much to the elder Time Lord's chagrin) felt pretty good about their work. Barring further untimely interference, it looked like the day might slide smoothly into their preferred non-violent ending.

What was that old saying about best-laid plans?

^..^

The night before the demonstration, none of them got much sleep, not even the two non-Time Lords. Jenny got into a shouting row with her father about whether or not she was going to stay tamely inside the TARDIS while history – _her_ history, thank you – was being potentially screwed to hell just outside and down the alley. He should have known from the start he was going to lose the argument. Besides, with her new regenerated face, it wasn't like anyone was going to recognize her and cause a paradox that way, was it?

"All right!" he finally shouted, giving in. "Fine! Do it your way!" And he stomped down the corridor in a high dudgeon to sulk in his and Rose's room. Rose let him stew it out of his system for an hour before she cautiously peeked inside to find him sitting against the headboard of their wide bed, hands clasped behind his head, staring morosely across at the large painting of her on the beach at Bad Wolf Bay. He'd redone it during their "second honeymoon", those first days after the Time Lock dropped, and her formerly tragic, tear-drenched face now shone with joy, eyes dancing, smiling that supernova smile. Even the background had been touched up, the gray storm clouds morphed into a spectacular orange-rose-and-purple sunset that spread upwards to the coral ceiling, wiping out the anguished _cri du couer_ that had been scrawled above.

He glanced at her in the doorway and gave a heavy sigh, lips twitching against his will. "I can't stay angry with you smiling at me like that," he admitted, tipping his head to the painting. "I'm going to have to find another room to be grumpy in."

Laughing, she slipped into the room, closed and locked the door behind her, and prowled provocatively up to him, a la Cassandra. His eyebrows shot skyward, and he reached out to pull her close, but she put her finger lightly on his lips, shushing any comment he might have made. Her fingers trailed seductively down his arm, tracing the lightest of patterns, then paused above the shimmer-wristwatch he still wore, and her smile broadened, echoing the portrait. She gave him just enough time to realize what she was up to and grin back before she stabbed the button and proceeded to make an old hopeless secret fantasy come true, making love to her old Doctor.

^..^

The next morning found the five of them positioned carefully around the plaza, awaiting the arrival of the various characters in the day's drama. Jack had found a handful of tiny, nearly invisible comlinks, "for those of us who can't speak telepathically", and now each of them was so equipped. The temporary stage had been built the day before, directly on the spot that would later be graced by the memorial obelisk. Jenny's troops came marching in, with her at the lead, a good hour before the scheduled start of the rally, and arranged themselves in a semi-circle around the edge of the plaza behind the stage, on the side leading generally towards Government House. Their orders were simply to keep things calm, and keep any march that developed away from the seat of power a few blocks away.

Team Doctor stood back near various pillars of the arcade on the sides away from the troops, with Jenny in the middle, as far away from her old self as she could get. All of them were keeping a sharp eye out for Jordan, but none of them had spotted him yet as the growl of a distant crowd reached them, growing ever louder, then the supposedly-impromptu march swept into the plaza from several of the connecting streets, filling it to capacity within minutes. Listening closely to those nearest them, each of the team realized that the situation could still go either way with sufficient prodding.

The Doctor was becoming more and more nervous with each passing second, unable to pinpoint exactly what was bothering him, until he made himself pause and block out the noise for a moment, focusing his senses inward. He realized his normally acute time sense had become numbed, befuddled with the sensations of several different time loops and timestream splits focused on the next few minutes. Fighting down a sudden rising panic, he opened his eyes again and began searching for anomalies, whispering into his comlink for everyone to stay sharp.

The leaders of the march had climbed up onto the stage and launched into their speeches, beginning with Petron Diener, the other candidate for Governor that Jenny had named Devron's puppet. Jenny had been dislodged from her safe perch by the entering crowd, swept along against her will until she was fairly close to the stage – and suddenly found herself only three people away from her former self. She kept her eyes firmly on the stage, not wanting to attract "her" attention. Luckily, the old Jenny was on high alert, continuously sweeping the crowd beyond with her eyes and ears, and dismissed the brunette as not dangerous with a single glance.

"I've got Jordan!" came Rose's whisper through the comlink. "He's standing against the arcade, near the west entrance, just watching." That put him far to one side of the stage.

"Stay back, but keep an eye on him," replied the Doctor. "Joshua, work around closer to him, too."

"Gotcha," came the young man's whisper, and he began threading his way behind the crowd, ducking through the arcade itself. "I'm two pillars away," he reported, then began reaching out mentally, trying to sneak past the Time Agent's mental barriers again.

And that's when all hell broke loose.

"He's spotted something, up on the roof opposite!" Rose's alert was the only warning they had. The sharp crack of rifle shots began echoing around the plaza, four, five, six of them in as many seconds, and with each one, another person fell. The first three were soldiers, including a young Decker, the fourth was one of the leaders on the stage, and the last two were spectators at the front of the crowd – including the man standing right next to the regenerated Jenny.

Screams instantly began piercing the air, and the panicked crowd surged in all directions, including towards the soldiers who had just witnessed their comrades fall. In a trice, without orders, most of them nervously jerked their rifles up. Whether they'd intended to or not, some fingers tightened on triggers, and the shots dropped three more civilians.

Unnoticed in the general melee, bright flashes of light came from two widely-spaced spots on the plaza, as first Jordan, then Jack, stabbed their vortex manipulators and flashed themselves up to the roof.

Up by the stage, time suddenly dilated for Jenny, and she felt like she was watching from some far distance, as the crowd surged into her from behind, forcing her ever closer to her old self. The blonde's head whipped around in slow motion, and they found themselves staring into each other's eyes as they both stumbled and began falling helplessly towards each other. Skin creeping, the brunette Jenny watched as horrified recognition stole into those familiar blue eyes. With only inches left between them, an icy shadow crept across them both, and they both glanced up involuntarily, seeming to take a lifetime to move their gaze.

Hanging above the crowd, lazily flapping its enormous black silken wings, was the soul-chilling form of a Reaper.


	12. Here We Come

**...Here We Come**

From across the plaza, the Doctor and Rose stared in frozen stupefied horror at the Reaper hanging above the stage, both flashing back to the day Rose had saved her father from death for a few hours, making a rip in time and letting the gruesome sterilizers in. In one corner of his awesome mind, the Doctor realized that nobody else around him in the crowd was reacting to the monster, which meant that only they could see it. So far. (Another corner wondered if he'd brought the monster himself somehow by wearing this old face in the shimmer, the one which had seen them before. Realizing how silly it was, he nevertheless vowed never to wear it again.)

Underneath the specter, the old blonde Jenny simply stared in horror at this unknown beast, while the new brunette one, recognizing it from her Dad's stories, suddenly found within her terror the strength to move with almost super-human speed and agility, and she twisted her body away from the other, grabbing the man next to her and shoving him into her twin instead – and at that moment, the sixth bullet struck the man's shoulder, caroming off his shoulder blade to rip downwards through his torso instead of straight through the blonde Jenny's left heart . As the three fell sprawling, the man dead on impact with the cobblestones, time sped up again for Jenny to its normal pace, and suddenly the Reaper gave a skin-twisting screech and lurched upwards, disappearing into thin air.

Jenny kept twisting, trying to snake away from her old self through the stampeding feet of the panicked crowd, when suddenly the world shifted again. The Time Lords felt as though their brains were being pulled through the eye of a needle, while the sound of a thousand fingernails scraping across cosmic blackboards screamed through their inner ears. Then with an inaudible Pop! they suddenly found themselves standing once more in the midst of a calm crowd, which was attentively listening to the speakers on stage. No one was down. No one was hurt. No shots had been fired. No grim Reaper hung above in midair.

History had somehow been pulled back on track.

Jenny glanced over at her old self, who had her head in her hands, slowly wilting towards the cobblestones as if dizzy, the man who had been shot moments before reaching concernedly to catch and steady her. Before the other woman could gather her wits and look around for the specter, or herself – if she remembered them, Jenny ducked down slightly and moved away through the crowd as swiftly and unobtrusively as she could.

Suddenly each of Team Doctor were babbling through the comlinks, talking over each other, until the Doctor hissed for silence. He took a quick roll call. "Rose? Jenny? Joshua? Jack? … Jack? … _JACK!_"

Finally Jack's voice came, cracked and strained. "Up on the roof. Above the bank. You'd better get up here, Doctor."

^..^

_A few seconds earlier:_

"He's spotted something, up on the roof opposite!" Jack jerked around at Rose's whisper through the comlink, his knife-edge reactions honed over three centuries of living as – well, as Captain Jack Harkness. He'd almost unconsciously marked Jordan's position relative to his own and the others' when Rose reported it, and knew instantly that "the roof opposite" was the one above his own head. He saw the flash of sunlight off the rifle barrel the same moment the shots began ricocheting around the plaza, and brought up his arm with the vortex manipulator without even thinking about it, punching in coordinates for the roof (relative to where he stood) with the ease of centuries of practice under fire, and hitting the emergency button that automatically sent him back one minute while knocking off his shimmer. (There were two other such buttons, one sent the wearer back five minutes, and the other one hour; but the one-minute was the one he'd always used. After all, he was Captain Jack Harkness; one minute was all he ever needed!)

He came out of the transport flash with nary a stumble, midway back on the roof above – and froze, gaping stupidly at the tableau before him. Jordan, his former self, had beaten him to the roof by a bare second, and was mid-lunge a few feet away. Jordan let out a yell at the man crouched at the edge of the roof, about to fire his rifle down into the crowd below. The sniper turned and snapped off a shot at Jordan, instead, missing him by a fraction of an inch; the concussed air surrounding the bullet nevertheless blew Jordan off his feet, and he fell backwards, hitting his head on the corner of the skylight housing. The sniper then turned and stared straight at Jack for a full second before he took off running, diving over the side of the roof onto the next, slightly lower one, and on towards the rear.

Jack, dumbfounded, let him go. He stood there, staring down at his former self lying unconscious on the roof, and didn't get his brain in gear until a minute later, when the Doctor called his name three times on the comlink.

The sniper had been wearing the same clothes as Jordan. And the same face.

The sniper trying to change history was unmistakably Captain Jack Harkness.

As he gave the Doctor directions to the roof, a chill shadow fell across his cheek, and he looked upwards into a new horror: a black-winged monstrosity hanging in the sky, waiting.


	13. More Questions than Answers

**More Questions than Answers**

Telling Rose, Jenny and Joshua to stay in the plaza to monitor for any further twists, the Doctor dashed through the alley to the rear of the bank, finding the steps that led up to the roof. He had a brief glimpse of a figure dropping down off the next building and running away, but had no time to investigate. _It's been a while since I've done any running! My life is definitely not what it used to be,_ he mused in one corner of his mind.

Such musings came to a screeching halt when his head popped up above the level of the roof. Instantly taking in the tableau of Jack standing over his unconscious former self, gaping up at the Reaper hovering silently above, he vaulted over the edge, yelling "_Jack! Get back! Don't touch him!_"

Jack raised both hands and stepped back. "Believe me, Doc, I wasn't planning to!" He gestured weakly upwards. "What in the nine hells of Ballanzoo is _that?_"

The Doctor carefully walked forward, stopping between the two Jacks, keeping his eyes above. "It's a Reaper. They're like bacteria, cleaning up wounds in spacetime. But why isn't it attacking?" He took a tentative step forward, then another, as the Reaper lazily backwinged away. The Doctor then raised his arm, holding out splayed fingers as if he could ward the specter off with personality alone. And perhaps he could. Adopting his coldest ice-blue Time Lord glare (which this older incarnation was actually better at, come to think of it), he commanded the Reaper to depart. "Go! There are no meals for you here! Be gone!"

With a single soul-piercing shriek, the Reaper winged upwards... and vanished.

The Time Lord and the former Time Agent wilted in relief, panting, then the Doctor turned to examine Jordan's prone figure. He was still unconscious, blood seeping slowly from a wound on the back of his skull. "What happened?"

"That... is an excellent question. I don't know. Doc... I've gotta tell you. I'm scared. I've been OK up till this, but now..." Jack walked over to another raised skylight and sat on the corner, visibly shaking.

This was the last thing the Doctor expected. "What happened up here?"

Jack took a deep breath and began debriefing himself, quickly and efficiently, Agency-style. "Rose told us Jordan had spotted something on the roof. I turned and saw a man with a rifle, just as he started shooting. I jumped back one minute and up here. Jordan must have beaten me by a second, I popped out behind him there. He yelled at the sniper, who turned and shot him instead of into the plaza. Jordan fell, the sniper took off. Then that thing appeared. Then you came up here. I didn't move from where I jumped to till just now." Coming abruptly to the end of the script, he shut his mouth with a pop and gulped.

The Doctor waited a beat, but Jack didn't continue. "So what jolted you? … Jack? Was it the Reaper? Seeing yourself shot?" They'd gotten so used to calling the old Jack 'Jordan' that sometimes they needed the reminder of who he was. He looked back and forth between the two versions of his friend, almost identical – Jack's face appeared to be a just few years older than Jordan's; only then registering that Jack's shimmer had dropped.

"No... Well, yes, but only after." Jack forced himself to raise his eyes and look at his friend. "Doc... the sniper was Jordan. Me. _Another_ version of me." The Doctor's jaw dropped, his eyes going wide, but Jack waved him off before he could make a sound. "Yes, I'm certain. He was right over there," he pointed to the edge of the roof, "not twenty feet away." He sighed. "I was so shocked that I couldn't move. I was paralyzed. I couldn't stop him. Hell, Doc, I didn't even think about my stun gun. Then that _thing_ appeared." His face looked as helpless as he felt. "What the hell is going on?"

The Doctor sat back on his heels, mind reeling. "Paradoxes on top of paradoxes... Well," he added, realizing as he spoke, "that explains the Reapers. They're being attracted by the paradoxes, the near-miss time crashes. As long as we can keep avoiding the actual crashes, they won't attack. I hope."

He turned back to Jordan, checking him out more carefully. "He doesn't seem to have been shot. Another near-miss. This bump on his head seems to be his only injury, but it may be severe. Let's get him to the TARDIS and check him out." He glanced over to the stairs and sighed. "I don't want to carry him down that, and the TARDIS is across the plaza. Can you jump us to the alley without touching him?"

"Sure thing. You grab him, I'll grab you." And suiting actions to words, they did just that, appearing in the alley feet from the blue box. The Doctor picked Jordan up then, slinging him across his shoulders, and followed Jack into the time machine and down the corridor to the infirmary.

After checking in with the trio still on the plaza (Jenny was shaky, but handling it, standing once again as far from her old self as possible and carefully lost in the crowd), the Doctor carefully checked Jordan out. He had a concussion, which would likely keep him out for several hours or days, but no other wounds. "No major or permanent brain damage, either, as far as I can tell right now," he told Jack as he cleaned the head wound and bandaged it.

"Can you read his mind and find out what's going on?" Jack asked, impatient for some answers.

The Doctor shook his head. "No. I wish I could, but an unconscious brain won't tell me anything. Well, it would, but coming from the subconscious, I'd have no way of knowing whether it was real or fantasy. And frankly, Jack, the idea of wandering around in your fantasies scares the hell out of me." He grimaced at his friend, who grinned weakly back for the effort at humor, then shook his head again. "No, we'll have to wait until he wakes up." Setting up several cameras and monitors, he also asked the TARDIS to watch the patient's brainwaves closely, letting him know the instant he began to regain consciousness. Then he checked around the small exam room to make sure there wasn't anything remotely weaponish laying around, and carefully locked the door behind them as they left.

By that time, the watchers outside reported the mood of the crowd was getting steadily rowdier, having been whipped up by the infiltrators' and Diener's exhortations – but it was going exactly according to Jenny's memory of the event. When the first rock was thrown at the soldiers, the Doctor ordered all three to retreat to the TARDIS out of harm's way, and turned on the sensors and news broadcasts to keep an eye on the day from the console room.

"Cancel that," he added after a moment's thought. "I could use something to eat; it helps me think. Send the broadcasts down to the kitchen, old girl," and the TARDIS complied.

Jenny came last through the front door, still pale and shaking slightly. The Doctor started to cross over to her, but Jack beat him to it. "Are you all right?" His voice was full of concern.

She looked at him for a long moment, the first time they'd spoken directly since the whole thing began. Then she gave him a tiny smile and nodded her head. "Yeah. That was close, though." She sighed. "I'll be glad to get back to our slow, boring life in Rockyford." She turned towards the Doctor, but not away from Jack... not really... she didn't step away. "What the hell just happened, Dad?" Jack turned that way, following her gaze, and their hands brushed together for an instant.

The Doctor's ice-blue eyes missed nothing, and he took an extra beat to force down the impulse to jump between them. "Come down to the kitchen and let's get a bite to eat, and talk it all out." He turned away suddenly and led the way.

Over a simple meal of cold meats, bread, cheese and fresh fruit, they caught each other up on what they'd seen and experienced that morning, and tried to make sense of it. The news that Jordan was now resting unconscious in the TARDIS infirmary was sharply overshadowed by the idea of yet another version of Jack running around with a sniper rifle in his hands, apparently with mayhem on his mind. (Jenny had jerked upwards slightly, the impulse to run to his bedside obvious, but forced herself to stay in the discussion. Time for that later.)

"What about those Reapers? What are they doing here, but not attacking?" Rose's mind hadn't strayed far from those hideous apparitions, as the single member of the group most affected by them previously.

The Doctor began to rub his face with his hands, then looked at them in actual distaste as he realized he still had the shimmer on, and punched his wristwatch to drop it. "That's better. That is such a weird feeling. It's like..."

"Like your face is being smashed into an invisible, hard plastic mask in the shape of whoever you're copying," supplied Jack, who had the most experience with shimmers.

"Precisely," replied the Doctor, now rubbing his face for real in relief. He turned back to his wife. "I think the Reapers are being attracted by all the potential paradoxes and rips, but so far we've managed to prevent any being created for them to feast on. As long as we're successful, they'll stay off." _I hope._

"What we need to be doing, is finding this other me, the sniper" interrupted Jack, impatient. "He's the key to this whole thing. But how come we've not had any glimpse of him before now?"

"You still have no memory of any of this?" asked the Doctor, and Jack shook his head. "Any idea how we can find him? What kind of place you'd be hiding out in?"

"We won't find him," came from Joshua, quiet up till now. "He's not here." He looked up at the Doctor, certainty growing even as he spoke. "He's up ahead."

"What do you mean?"

"Remember how we saw the changes happen, seventeen years ahead? You said we saw them when we did because that's when the agency of the change was operating from, jumping back and forth between times. Right?" The Doctor nodded. "OK. Remember HOW we saw them? First Decker and the family disappeared, because he was killed by the sniper here this morning – I saw him fall before time got wrenched back. But then, the other changes didn't sweep through until two hours later – the changes that will occur as a result of the bomb at the speech three days from now. And the only reason those effects would have been separated is because the agent – the sniper – jumped ahead to that time in between these two events here."

"Why would he be going back and forth?" put in Rose.

Joshua shrugged. "To check on his results, maybe, or to get new orders. Or both." He looked straight at Jack. "I can't imagine you doing this on your own."

Jack sighed, shaking his head slowly in bewilderment. "I can't imagine doing it _at all_. Like I told you before, I have no memory of _ever_ being a sniper like that, and I can't come up with any scenario in which I would have done it. Assassination, maybe, of someone trying to change history themselves, but not the slaughter of innocent bystanders. That's NEVER been something I would have done, even in my dark days with the Agency. I can't make heads or tails of this." He caught the look from the Doctor, and shook his head again. "But yes, I am sure of what I saw. That was me holding that rifle on the roof."

"What we need to be doing," the Doctor replied thoughtfully, "is talking to Jordan." He lifted his head as the TARDIS sent him the mental image of the infirmary, sounding a bell from the ceiling at the same moment. "And here's our chance. He's waking up."


	14. Tangled Memories

**Tangled Memories**

After a brief, intense discussion, the Doctor maintained he wanted to drop all the subterfuge and confront Jordan directly; so it was that as the patient groggily opened his eyes, groaning at the pain in his thick skull, the first face he saw was the Doctor's own natural brown-eyed visage. He stared for several long moments, as he fought to place the image, then his eyes narrowed. "You! Who the hell are you?"

"I'm the Doctor. And I'm no threat to you. I'm a friend," came the calm reply.

Jordan shook his head, wincing a second later at the renewed pain from the motion. "I have no friends. I..." His eyes widened again as his most recent memories caught up with him, and he gasped. "Jenny? Is she all right? I've got to..." He began to struggle to sit up.

The Doctor nodded as he reached out to gently pushed him back onto the pillow. "She's OK. She's fine. You stopped the sniper in time. No bullets were fired – except at you. And you're lucky you didn't get hit."

"I stopped..." Jordan went limp again, then grimaced painfully, his face wretched. "You mean I stopped _myself_ in time."

At those words, a gasp from a different quarter of the room attracted Jordan's attention, and he turned to focus on... himself. He froze, staring unbelievingly at Jack.

"So it _was_ me?" Jack whispered, returning the stare intensely.

"Don't you remember? You look older, you must be my future self. Don't you know?"

"That's right, Jackass, I'm your future. But no, I don't remember. I have a hole in my memories, centered around you right there."

The Doctor had turned, face twisting in ironic amusement. "You call yourself Jackass?"

"Yeah. It's my secret handshake. Come to think of it, though, this is the first time I've ever actually gotten to use it."

They turned back to Jordan, who strangely looked gut-punched. "You don't remember _any_ of this?" Jack shook his head, and Jordan looked bereft. "I was hoping you'd tell me what the hell is going on."

The Doctor broke in. "And we were hoping you'd tell _us_. Why can't you?"

"My head's all fragged up. It's like someone took all my memories from the past two years and dumped them into a blender, and then poured half of the fragments off. Nothing in there makes any sense, nothing's connected to anything else. All I can see are snatches of scenes, with no rhyme or reason." He swallowed, hard, and then went on in a hoarse, horrified whisper. "I remember... Gods help me, I remember shooting down into the crowd. But I don't remember why, or how I got there, or what happened after that. I don't remember being interrupted, either. I just see the view down into the plaza, through the rifle sights, picking them off, one by one..." He moaned, and then lay back and closed his eyes again, exhausted.

Horror-struck, the two men stared down at him for several long seconds, not daring to look at each other. Then, remembering, the Doctor asked him, "And the bomb? Do you remember setting the bomb?"

"What bomb? No..." came the hoarse reply.

_*Doctor?*_ Rose's telepathic whisper threaded through his mind from the next room, where the other three were monitoring them. _*He's telling the truth. Josh says he can't make heads or tails of the 'mishmash' either – what he can see past Jordan's mindshields; they're pretty strong.*_

_*Thank you, love.*_ The Doctor pondered the problem for a few seconds before making a decision. He stepped closer to the bed and leaned against it. "Jordan? Jack? – I've gotten too used to calling you by your cover name," he added wryly. "Which would you prefer just now?"

"Jordan's easier, as long as there's more than one of me," the man on the bed whispered pragmatically. "What was your name again?"

"Just 'the Doctor'. Listen, Jordan. I'm a Time Lord. I know that doesn't mean anything to you now, but it will soon. What you need to understand right now is this: we've got a major situation on our hands, paradoxes on top of paradoxes. We – this Jack and I, and a few others, are here to try to keep history going on track, the way it's supposed to be. And every one of us has a personal stake in this. Are you listening?"

Jordan opened his eyes. "I'm listening."

"Good. Understand this. Jenny – Colonel Starr – is _my daughter_." He paused for a moment to let that sink in.

"You mean she's a time traveler, too? She never told me..."

"Not yet, not at this point in her life. She won't be until she and I meet up again, a few years into her future. And my number one priority here is to make sure that she makes it to that meeting, just as she should. You understand that? I want my daughter safe. And, almost as much, I want the grandson that she's going to give me." He saw and heard both Jacks react to that revelation with twin gasps, but he didn't bother to turn to his friend.

"Second, in a few years _you_ are going to meet me, too – and as much as it pains me to admit this, you're going to save my life, several times. And since I'm rather fond of living, I'd prefer that _you_ make it till then, too – which means that I'm going to keep you safe, as well. You got that?"

"Yes, sir." Jordan wasn't sure why he slipped into military speak, but it seemed appropriate. This man, the Doctor, was obviously in charge at the moment.

"Good. Now, listen. I'm also a high-level telepath. Let me help you. Lower your mindshields and let me in, let me try to straighten it out – or at least see if I can figure out what happened to scramble your memory."

Jordan lay still for a moment, considering. He turned to his future self – and Jack broke in with an emphatic "Completely!" before he could even open his mouth to ask the question about trust. A moment longer, and he turned back to the Doctor and simply nodded, exhausted from the strain he'd been under for months, just trying to keep his head above water long enough to understand.

The Doctor shut his eyes for a moment, running through the ancient mantra for focusing all his attention on a single point in the time it took to take a single deep breath. Then he placed his hands lightly on either side of Jordan's face, looking into his eyes. "Just try to relax." There was a momentary struggle, then the last barrier went down, and he was aware of Jordan's... Jack's... mental apology. _*Sorry. Forgot about that one.*_ The Time Agent had obviously had some experience with mind linking before, though his own telepathic powers were too low to register consciously.

_*If there's anything you don't want me to see, just throw a blanket over it, all right? Like THAT!*_ he added, flinching away from a glimpse of Jordan and Jenny in a _very_ private moment. He waited a beat, and suddenly a fur rug was over the scene. *_Where did you – never mind.*_

_Interesting,_ he thought to himself. Where Rose's memory was overlaid with the imagery of a never-ending castle, with wings and halls and rooms of memories, Jack's was mostly laid out in an open landscape, apparently sorted by both personal time and place. He glimpsed a range of mountains in the distance that felt like 'home', wherever home was - _*the Boeshane_ _ Peninsula, where I grew up* _Jordan supplied, following his thought. He went on, identifying various other locations in the landscape: forests, fields, waterways, scattered towns and distant cities. There were very subtle lines drifting through every scene, like a high-tide mark surrounding pools of action – and suddenly the Doctor recalled Jack's earlier flustered words. _Mental tree rings for age lines, eh? I get it, now..._

Then the Time Agent mentally turned them around to face another direction._ *This is the last two years...* _The land before them was crumpled, fractured, and topsy-turvy, resembling nothing so much as an M. C. Escher lithograph. Glimpses of scenes, fragments of memory, were scattered around like cake crumbs, but a single step into the nightmare and the Doctor couldn't tell up from down, and couldn't connect any two crumbs together. Even the 'age lines' were chopped up and tangled together like short strands of spaghetti. The entire scene was overlaid with an oily, metallic tang entirely missing from the rest of Jordan's memory-landscape, a tang that told the Doctor volumes.

"'Scrambled' is definitely the right word," he commented aloud this time for the other listeners. "Your memory has been tampered with, Jordan, very clumsily. But effectively enough, and thoroughly enough, that I can't tell what's real and what isn't. Nor can I put them back into the right order."

He suddenly caught a whisper of cool music sliding next to his own awareness, and realized that Joshua was also listening in. So he poked around a little more to give the young man time. _*Anything?*_ he sent towards the whisper, and heard a faint mournful dirge in reply, before the words _*No... too fragmented...*_ floated back from the receding awareness.

He began to disengage, coming back to awareness of the physical world, when suddenly Jordan clutched at both his arms, a panicked look stealing into his eyes. "The last three months? Doctor? Were they real?" The Doctor eased back in to the other man's mind, and looked again at the area now littered with blankets. They were all clear, laid out in between their mental vantage point in the present moment and the Escher nightmare.

"Yes. They're real."

"Thank the gods..." Jordan collapsed back onto the pillow again, eyes sinking closed, clearly past the point of exhaustion.

Jack had one more question for his former self, and he slipped it into the air in a low, urgent voice, just enough to penetrate. "What are your orders now, Agent Harkness? What's the mission?"

"Supposed to... assist Devron... take out... opposition leaders..." Jordan mumbled. "I couldn't... Jenny... she means _everything..._" And he was out cold.

(Rose, standing in the next room between Joshua and Jenny, slipped her hand into the younger woman's and squeezed. Jenny squeezed back, but then with a sob she turned and ran out and down the corridor to her own room, tears streaming.)

The Doctor puttered around for a bit, setting up an intracutaneous saline drip, then adding a sedative to the saline to keep Jordan under. Then he checked the monitors and the TARDIS' mind again, and left the room, shooing a still-astonished Jack out before him and locking the door securely once more.

He gathered the others up and led them back to the kitchen, where they silently arranged themselves around the table again. After few minutes for them all to digest what they'd heard and seen, he looked around at them all – only then registering Jenny's absence. Rose caught his thought and shook her head. _*Let her be, love.*_

He nodded. "Well, people? Do we have anything more to go on than we did before?"

One by one, the others shook their heads. The Doctor sighed, and then turned to Jack with a question. "Jack? Is there any way he could have – _you_ could have tampered with your own memory? Does the Agency have any method for doing that to yourself, or any reason why you would?"

Jack shook his head. "I've never heard of any. There've been whispers about memory tampering, but not on Agents. And I've never heard of anyone doing it to themselves. If he did – if I did, it was by accident. But I've no memory of ever even _seeing_ that kind of equipment, let alone using it."

"Then we're left with one fact, high probability. There's still someone else out there pulling his strings: whoever scrambled his memory, and then sent him back here again."

They sat at the table for another very long time, mostly silent, broken occasionally by a comment or question, or Joshua relaying from the news feeds that the Planetary Defense Force had finally arrived, breaking up the demonstration at last and beginning to make arrests, completing the day according to Jenny's memory. Everyone around the table breathed a sigh of relief at that. One more hurdle down.

Suddenly Jack slapped his hand on the table, eyes alight. "Of course! Of _course! That's_ what we're forgetting!" He turned to the Doctor, his old manic grin creeping across his face. "Shimmers, Doc! _Shimmers!_"

The Doctor's jaw dropped.


	15. Replay

**Replay**

The next two days passed uneventfully, as Team Doctor stayed largely within the TARDIS, monitoring the situation via the news feeds. The confessions that Jenny remembered from the leaders of the Devron Group's infiltrators were duly made public, and the tide of opinion surged against them. Once again the Doctor's message was to be heard everywhere: s_ome things are worth preserving._ Plans were announced for Governor Tannert to make a last pre-election speech in Fountain Plaza midmorning on the third day after the near-riot, and the team began their final preparations, as well. The Doctor and Jack, working very late one night, installed several tiny monitors around the perimeter of the plaza, including some under the stage itself that could sniff out any whiff of explosives, and the TARDIS was put into high alert. The Doctor put up with her lighthearted grumbles with a grin; she hadn't had this much fun in years, snoozing tamely away in their barn.

Jenny spent much of her time simply sitting by Jordan's bed, with her own thoughts for company. The Doctor insisted on keeping him sedated for the duration, to keep him out of trouble. Jack sometimes paused outside the door, but never had the nerve to go in.

At last the day dawned bright and clear, a beautiful late spring morning, and the time ship reported once again that no explosives had been brought into the plaza, and no sign of the other Jordan. The Doctor geared himself up for another battle with Jenny, getting her to stay inside and keep an eye on their 'patient', but was suddenly deflated when she calmly agreed. The near-miss with her former self had rattled her more than she cared to admit, although it did explain the strange dizzy spell she'd had that day, the only one she'd ever suffered. Why she had retained no memory of the brief alternate universe sniper episode, no one could say. The Doctor conjectured that it was her later long association with the TARDIS that had given her the Time Lord safeguarded personal timeline memory. Nevertheless, she agreed to stay put; besides, keeping Jordan safe was her own primary mission. She did, however, grab one of the commlinks to keep in touch with the outside team.

By two hours before the speech, the other four were 'loitering' around the plaza, much as they had before, but this time much closer to the stage. Rose, disguised as a peddler taking advantage of the gathering crowds to sell a few jars of her own jam (previously stored in the TARDIS kitchen against future travels), was covering the entrances to the left of the stage, while Joshua, ostensibly taking a nap, was tucked into the base of a pillar by the center rear. As he was by necessity closest to the stage and the expected bomb, the Doctor made sure the pillar was between the young man and the action, and gave him strict instructions to keep it there.

The Doctor and Jack, both once more wearing their shimmers in case the old Jenny showed up early, were covering the two right-hand entrances, and keeping an eye on the front of the stage, respectively. After a bit, Jack edged over to the Time Lord's side. He wanted to talk.

"Grandson?" he asked, bluntly coming to the point.

The Doctor grunted. "Not yours," he replied, equally bluntly. "Jenny had a brief relationship with a certain gentleman a few years ago, and Brandon was the result."

"So where is he now?"

"He disappeared during those changes we spoke of, up ahead. My best guess is that because she regenerated, the 'new' Jenny just... didn't hit it off with the gentleman the way the 'old' one did. So Brandon was never conceived."

"Oh." They stood silently for a bit, then the Doctor glanced back at his friend.

"Are you sure about this, Jack? I know it's only a contingency, but..."

"I'm sure. Your history, and Jenny's, requires her to witness the 'death' of one Jack Harkness. So if we're wrong about our theory, it's the only way to make sure that happens. I'm not looking forward to it, though."

"I know you've got a spot picked out, that hopefully will keep you far enough out of the blast range – if Jenny was correct in their assumption of the bomb's location under the podium – but if she was wrong, or if you are..."

"Then I'll be in pieces. I never told you this, Doc, but I went through that once."

"You came back from being blown apart?"

"Yup. It was easily THE most painful thing I've ever been through, bar absolutely frakking none. And I'm not looking forward to doing it again – if it even works this time. But, like I said... if I must. I'm rather fond of my life, too, but if keeping the universe together means I either go through that, or bite the dust, so be it. It's worth it."

Silence again. Then, "Jack..."

He was interrupted. "Did you ever hear of the Serenity Prayer, Doc?"

"Doesn't ring a bell. From here, you mean?"

"No, from Earth. It was popular back in the twentieth century. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and – "

"And the wisdom to know the difference." The Doctor remembered it, and finished the last line along with Jack. "I never was much good at the first part, or the last."

"Me neither. This being the planet Serenity, though, seems a good time to learn."

The Doctor snorted softly. Then, without looking at his friend, he went on. "I've always been rubbish at goodbyes, and I sincerely hope this isn't one. But just in case..." He turned and held out his hand. "It's been an honor, Captain."

Surprised, Jack took his hand and shook it, solemnly. "Likewise, Doctor."

By mutual unspoken consent, they both turned back to their previous spots without another word.

A few seconds later, Rose called over the commlink. "Doctor?" Her voice was a frightened whisper.

"Yes, love?"

"Look up."

They all did so, and a freezing chill settled over the sunny day. Perched on the edges of the buildings surrounding them, not making a sound, and apparently still invisible to the hundred-or-so Serenites in the plaza, were four watching Reapers.

"Why aren't they attacking?" Rose asked breathlessly.

"They're waiting for time to break." The Doctor tried unsuccessfully to keep the dread from his voice. As had happened during the demonstration, his time sense went wonky, jumbled with the sharp prongs of intruding time loops and paradoxes, throwing him off-balance.

"Oh. Well. No pressure then. Good." Jack tried for humor, but his voice quavered and it fell flat. Before anyone could react, though, Jenny's voice came through the commlink and upset the apple cart once again.

"Oh, NO! Dad, he's gone! Jordan's escaped!"

"How did he – never mind!" Putting the Reapers from his mind as best he could, the Doctor hurriedly sent a warning to the TARDIS to secure her front door, but it was too late. Even as he did, she told him their prisoner/patient had already slipped outside.

The Doctor swore, but had no time to react, for just then Rose's voice came again after Jenny's. "Alert! Jordan's here! Just came up my street and is heading towards the stage steps!"

Mentally switching gears yet again, Jack and the Doctor whirled back to the stage, in time to see a familiar figure mount the steps on the far end and – deceptively casual – wander over to the podium, as if a curious bystander checking out the view.

Astoundingly, the Doctor began to chuckle. "Yup. You were right, Jack. He's wearing a shimmer. That is absolutely NOT you."

Jack wilted, sighing in relief. Even he had been worried. "Can you see underneath it?" he asked breathlessly.

"No, I can't make it out. Josh? Can you read anything?"

Joshua had peeked around the pillar to locate the target, then leaned back again, concentrating on reading the mind of the mystery man wearing Jordan's image. He read off the surface details quickly, as the subject 'casually' leaned against the podium and 'dropped' a small package into its base, although nobody noticed but the three time travelers surreptitiously watching him. "I can see the room where he's staying – wait. It's across the alley from Jordan's window. And I see a package hidden behind the bureau there."

"Another bomb?" Jack prompted him, worried.

"No. Information, and some important gadget."

"His name, Josh! His name!" reminded the Doctor.

"It's... Salderano? That's all I'm getting."

Out of the corner of his eye, the Doctor saw Jack's head jerk up at the name. But he didn't have time to ask, as their quarry turned and began walking back across the stage. They started moving quickly, converging on the stairs to cut him off. The Doctor, behind the man's back, broke into an almost-run – the last thing he wanted was for Rose to get in the bomber's way first.

Suddenly, the faux Jordan stopped dead, having spotted something. Just as it crossed the Doctor's mind that he wasn't staring at any of them, another body launched itself from the arcade and into 'Jordan'. A glance at the bandage wrapped around the newcomer's head identified him to the three would-be capturers.

Jordan.

The 'real' one.

Team Doctor froze as one, stupefied at the sight of the two mirror images wrestling silently across the stage. Still dressed the same, the only identifiable difference was Jordan's bandage. In a corner of his mind, the Doctor realized something was wrong – neither one seemed to be fighting very well. He could put Jordan's handicap down to his head wound and sustained sedation, but what was with the other one?

As the crowd in front of the stage noticed the fight, too, and stopped talking to stare, the Doctor spared a second to glance upwards: yup, the Reapers were still there, leaning in and watching the situation below as intently as the people. What time rip were they expecting?

The faux Jordan, even fighting poorly, suddenly managed to get a foot planted in the right spot, and heaved the bandaged one over his shoulder, using his opponent's own momentum to throw him off the back of the stage and onto the cobblestones, right next to the Doctor. Then he whirled around and leapt forward, aiming to jump off the front and away. The Doctor began to scramble up onto the stage after him, but suddenly two strong hands grabbed him and pulled him back, and he looked up at Jack in surprise.

"Jordan? _Jordan!_" Jenny's voice rang out from across the plaza, and the Doctor glanced up to see it was the old one, her blonde hair shining in the sun.

The fake Jordan, Salderano?, paused in confusion, reacting a second later than normal, and stared across the plaza at Jenny. From right beside the podium.

Jack whipped out his gun. Aiming calmly, like the professional he was, he pointed it at the package he could just glimpse inside the base, and pulled the trigger – and the podium exploded, taking half the stage with it and throwing everyone back. Salderano, his "Jordan" shimmer intact until the end, disappeared in a cloud of smoke and debris – and blood, and flying body parts.

The Doctor found himself sprawled on his back across a once-more unconscious Jordan, with Jack lying next to him. He shoved Jack away before he could touch his former self, hissing at him to find Rose and Joshua, and get back to the TARDIS. Before he could pull himself up, he glanced up at the sky, and gaped at the sight of the four Reapers launching themselves up, screeching their terrible, disappointed cry for his ears alone, then winking away into thin air. His time sense snapped back with an almost audible _ping, _and somehow he knew they were gone for good. It was over.

He rolled over and pushed himself to his feet, then heaved Jordan's form across his shoulders and ran, hunched over, through the arcade towards the alley before the smoke cleared.

Before he could reach it, though, across the plaza Jenny finally unfroze, and her piercing scream tore through his twin hearts, a chilling cry of pain and loss he knew he'd never, ever leave behind. _"JORDAAAAAAN!"_


	16. Erase

**Erase**

The Doctor staggered into the alley under Jordan's unconscious weight, Jenny's heart-wrenching scream still ringing in his ears, and met the regenerated version of her running from the TARDIS. Amazingly, everything had happened within just sixty seconds or so.

"Dad?" she gasped, taking in his burden in a fearful glance, and he answered quickly to reassure her.

"It's OK. Everything's OK now. This is him, the real Jordan, he's not dead. Help me get him back into the TARDIS."

Just then, running footsteps came from behind, and he turned awkwardly to see Rose pelting up. "Where's - " he began, but she cut him off.

"Jack and Josh went to find Salderano's room and retrieve that package; they figure the answers are there, that's why Josh 'saw' it."

He nodded, and the three of them turned and carried Jordan back into the infirmary once again, and once again the Doctor checked him over. He didn't seem to have any new damage, although a bit of fresh blood had seeped into his head bandage from the reopened scrape. The Doctor recleaned and rebandaged it, and then left him to rest, locking the door again behind them.

Back in the control room, he quickly caught Jenny up on the events in the plaza, filling in the details she hadn't been able to guess from their commlink chatter.

"What about the Reapers?" Rose wanted to know, shuddering again at the memories they conjured up.

"They're gone. The best answer I can come up with is that they were attracted to the potential splits, or perhaps even splits that were made, creating alternate realities that we avoided stepping into. There might be universes out there now where the Reapers are feasting – or we might be in the universe that they themselves re-created by mopping up the others. I don't know. But I can't sense any more disturbances in the time stream. It's over."

Gazing in wonderment at each other, the bondmates let out twin sighs of relief. A moment later the front door opened and the two thieves rushed in, triumphant.

"Piece of cake," Jack flashed his old, rakish grin.

"Let's see what we've got," the Doctor ignored him, as usual, and grabbed the package. It was a small, flat, plain metal box a few inches across, with a thumbprint lock – a standard personal, portable safe box. He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and whizzed it against the lock, and it clicked open.

"I don't suppose you'd let me..." Jack began, eyeing the sonic lustfully, but he was quelled by a sharp look from its owner. "Never mind."

Inside the box were several ID's, a data cube, and a walnut-sized leather drawstring pouch. The Doctor picked up the data cube and tossed it to Joshua, standing by the TARDIS keyboard. "See what's in that."

He turned back just in time to see Jack opening up the pouch, revealing an oddly-shaped lump of dark, smoky crystal. It was hard to see properly, seeming to both absorb light and reflect it off its fractured, oily-looking surface. It caught their eyes and held them, drawing them in...

The Doctor jerked back, slapping Jack's hand away as he reached to touch it with bare fingers, then he grabbed it himself, carefully touching only the pouch, and then punched a new setting into the sonic and whizzed it against the lump. A sharp, impossibly high-pitched whine sliced through the air, causing everyone but the Doctor to throw their hands up over their ears – not that it did any good. The whine shrieked even higher, then suddenly cut off with a miniature bang, and the crystal, now dark and dead, sat in the Doctor's hand, smoking slightly.

"What was _that_?" Jack demanded.

"_That..._" the Doctor replied, tossing it to him, "was the cause of all your memory troubles, Jack. It's a Cavrolichic Memory Crystal, used by the Shannats of Cavroliche to store and share their memories – and by other species to attempt the same. On humans and others, it sometimes works as a means to implant and/or erase memories – both of which Salderano was attempting to do to you – to Jordan. Unfortunately, it rarely works as described on the tin, and on you, it just scrambled things up, like we saw.

"Which reminds me – who is Salderano? You recognized the name."

"My last boss at the Agency. I'd only started working for her a short time before my memory loss. Yes, _her_. The Salderano I knew was female."

"Female... that explains the fighting style! She wasn't as strong as she looked in her Jordan disguise, and nowhere near as practiced at hand-to-hand combat. If she'd been up against you, or if Jordan hadn't been so badly wounded, she wouldn't have lasted a second." The Doctor threw his head back, eyes alight, as the pieces started falling together. "That's how she got access to you, Jack; as your boss. She jumped ahead after the demonstration-slash-riot, and implanted her memory of being the sniper into your head, then sent you back here. Stars only know how many other times she had a go at you. The crystal doesn't require physical contact."

"But why? Why was she doing it all?"

"I can answer that," Joshua put in from the console. He'd been poking through the data cube, and now tapped a few buttons, pulling a picture up onto the screen and turning it towards the others. "Is this Salderano?" he asked Jack.

Jack narrowed his eyes, comparing the picture to his centuries-old memory, then nodded. "Yes. That's her."

Joshua grinned at Rose. "Follow the money. It's Junia Tonas, the 'local executive' for Devron who made an obscene fortune in the alternate future. There's an agreement on the cube dated a few months before this election, between her and a Devron mining exec – all carefully worded – that will give her the position if she can deliver Serenity."

Jack was still puzzled. "But why do all this to me? Why put her memories into my head?"

The Doctor had the answer. "To set you up as the fall guy. If something went wrong, she could turn you in as the culprit, a rogue Agent, and your own memories would prove your guilt – she thought. I don't think she realized how badly she'd been botching that. And she'd also reap the rewards for your capture, to boot."

Jack swore as the realization of how badly he'd been used began to sink in. Rose put a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. "At least it wasn't the Agency itself that screwed you, just one person gone bad."

He shot her a dark look. "Does it matter? It still shoved my life out the airlock. And cost me my memories..." Then it hit him. "Wait a minute... no it didn't. I haven't... Jordan hasn't _lost_ his memories yet; they're scrambled. Unless that head wound..." he looked questioningly at the Doctor, who shook his head.

"No, he hasn't been re-injured to that degree. He wouldn't have lost it all now, though he hasn't been awake to ask him."

Jack stared. "Doc... that means... shit. In order for history – _our_ history, yours _and_ mine, to come out right, that means _you_ have to erase his memories of the last two years."

Horrified, the Doctor stared back, then began shaking his head. "No. I won't do it."

"Doc, you _have_ to. It's the only way, now. Unless one of the rest of you can do it?" Jack looked around at Jenny and Joshua, but they both shook their heads. They didn't have the knowledge or skills.

Jack turned back to the Doctor and simply looked at him. His mind racing, the Doctor tried to find another way and failed, and at last he had no choice. He turned without a word and walked heavily back to the infirmary, and stood over the Time Agent's bed, gazing down at his old friend's young body. He felt, rather than saw, the newer version behind him in the doorway, the only one who had followed him, and spoke without turning.

"I won't erase them, I can't. All I can do is block them off securely."

"Good!" came the startlingly upbeat reply. "Then you can _UN_- block them in _this_ head when you're done."

The Doctor did turn then, and looked his surprise, then a tiny, relieved smile twisted the corners of his mouth upwards. This he could live with. Without a word he turned back and placed his hands back on Jordan's cheeks, closing his own eyes and moving in. Jordan's unconscious landscape was dark and frightening, with twisted apparitions of the daylight memories taking their place, but the Doctor was still able to recognize the general layout. Without looking too closely, he reached out and swiftly built a solid dome with his mind, putting it firmly into place over the fractured Escher print of the most recent memories, and expanded it to cover everything between there and his own feet. Quickly checking that the dome was impenetrable and unbreakable, he noticed with amusement that the spaghetti strands of the 'mental tree rings' had reformed, running unbroken around the outside of the dome. When Jordan – Jack – awoke, he'd know how much time he was missing.

He backed out carefully, and came to himself again in the infirmary. Then he turned back to the doorway, and without a word walked the two steps to Jack, taking his friend's head and making the connection. He found himself staring at the same dome, now looking battered and worn from three hundred years of assaults from its unwilling host, and simply waved it into wisps of mist. Then he backed out again, quickly this time – and caught the former Time Agent as his knees buckled.

Jack grabbed onto the Doctor and hauled himself unsteadily back to his feet, then shifted and held on to the door jamb instead.

"I still can't unscramble it, Jack, or erase – or even identify – the memories that aren't yours. I'm sorry. But at least you have them back."

Jack nodded, then looked up, surprising tears in his eyes. "Thanks, Doc," was all he said.

^..^

About an hour later, Jack flashed into another alley just outside the little spaceport, finding the Doctor crouched next to a still-unconscious Jordan. "Got it. Here's the coordinates of the hidey-hole in the cargo ship I remember waking up in. It's already loaded, and due to lift off in a few hours." He tossed Jordan's vortex manipulator to the Doctor, who strapped it back onto its owner's wrist. "You sure he's going to be OK?"

"Yes. He'll be under another two-three days from that long-lasting sedative, then be up and about and conning his way to Earth in no time." A last look, and the Doctor reached over and carefully punched the button on the wristwatch, and Jordan faded out for the last time. "Good luck, old friend," whispered the Doctor, too softly for Jack to hear.

"Now for this," Jack said, holding up the metal box. He'd carefully crafted a fake report from Jordan, omitting any reference to anyone other than himself and Salderano, and added it to the box along with the now-inoperative crystal and the news reports from the alternate future about Junia Tonas. He was on his way to send it to the Time Agency headquarters; through a complicated network of various drop-boxes and time-delays it would reach them the week after Salderano's last jump back. He could have taken it directly, but he wanted to stay as far away from HQ as possible, both in time and space.

"There's no way of knowing whether this is the straw that broke the Agency camel's back, but it might be," he'd commented to the Doctor. "And I feel just enough residual loyalty now to send it to them and let them know how badly they fucked up when they hired her. Or maybe that's just delayed revenge talking. Anyway, it feels right."

Now, waving a jaunty hand at the Time Lord, he sauntered off to send it on its way. "Meet you back at the TARDIS in an hour."

The Doctor watched him go, then after he'd turned the corner out of sight, he sighed heavily, and whispered, "No, you won't."

He walked swiftly across the small city to the alley behind Fountain Plaza and let himself into the old blue box, patting the door fondly as he closed it. *_Did you have fun, old girl?* _he sent her, getting a half-delighted, half-pouting mental nudge in return. She knew she was going back to the barn again.

He glanced swiftly around the control room, seeing Joshua, Jenny, and Rose all present, involved in various bits of non-busy-ness as they waited for his return. Jenny's brunette appearance still gave him a slight jolt, but as he'd explained earlier, she _should_ revert to her normal, pre-regenerated self once they returned to their own time in the future. Zen Physics strikes again. He grinned at his family, striding up to the console and throwing levers as he walked around it. "Ready to go home?" he asked the room at large. _"Allons-y!"_ And he tripped the last switch, throwing them into the Void.

"Dad! Wait! What about Jack?" Jenny cried, too late, then stopped, staring coldly at her father as realization dawned.

"Are you _ever_ going to stop leaving him behind?" asked Rose into the sudden silence.

"When he stops following me," her husband replied. He looked up at Jenny then, meeting her stare with a cold one of his own, the iciness not for her, but for the missing man. "Yes, I know what _Jordan_ said, Jenny. But that was three hundred years and _countless_ lovers ago. Let it go." He wasn't trying to be cruel, just bleakly, bluntly honest.

She did understand that, but still... "You picked a hell of a time to try to act like my father," she seethed, then stalked to the front door.

He looked after her sadly, hearts breaking for her again, then resolutely worked the dials to bring them back the their farm, the same evening they'd left, just a few minutes later. He'd _carefully_ bookmarked the proper moment in the TARDIS memory banks as they'd jumped back. The usual bumps and jolts as they landed, and Jenny wrenched open the door before he could speak, jumping out at a run to go find her son –

– and fell bonelessly into a heap on the straw-covered barn floor, swiftly morphing back to her previous blonde self before she hit the ground, just as her father had predicted. He ran to pick her up, pulling her tenderly into his arms, and tersely told Joshua to go find Brandon.

He did so, returning from the house with a sleepy boy in tow just as his mother was coming to. "He was asleep right there at the kitchen table," he reported to the others.

Jenny pulled herself upright and away from the Doctor, pulling Brandon roughly into her arms with a wild sob, running her hands over his face and torso to make sure he was fine, over his confused protests against this affront to his seven-year-old dignity.

The Doctor sighed, getting stiffly to his feet and walking heavily away towards the big open doors of the barn. He leaned against the opening, drinking in the loveliest view in the universe, Larrik Hollow, peacefully undisturbed in the evening sun. A warm hand crept into his, and first he squeezed it, then dropped it to pull Rose into his arms, and together they stood and watched the larriks dart and play in the lingering dusk under the banana trees.

Home.


	17. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

A few weeks later, early one fall morning, Jenny walked down the path to their little front gate with her father and her son as she did every morning, seeing them off to school. They would stop by to pick up Kylie and Kriston on their way. Rose had already left for her stint at the garden co-op, and Joshua was bunking at a large farm on the other side of Rockyford Village where he had been hired to help bring in their bean harvest.

She gave them each a last, warm hug, Brandon protesting as usual; he wanted to be away to play with his friend on their walk to school, and had never understood the reasons for his family's sudden fussing over him that summer. Laughing, she let him go, and the two of them walked up the path over the hilltop, the boy dashing ahead.

She stood at the gate for several long minutes after they'd disappeared over the horizon, gazing after them, just breathing. She'd somewhat forgiven the Doctor for his abrupt departure from the past, but... it still hurt.

"Jenny?" At first, she didn't realize the soft call had come from anywhere other than her own memory. Then she turned and saw him walk out from between the trees a few yards away.

"Jor... Jack," she corrected herself midstream. She felt like the wind had been knocked out of her lungs.

"Jack," he confirmed as he came to a stop on the other side of the closed, waist-high gate. He stood there gazing at her silently, face weathered, eyes ancient.

"How did you find us?" she asked to fill the silence that stretched out between them.

"You told me. 'Boring old Rockyford Village.' And I got the date from the TARDIS as I made up my fake report." He didn't bother explaining why he'd waited past that date; he didn't need to. To give her, and perhaps himself, time to process things.

"Jenny..." he went on. "I know this is going to sound incredibly, unbelievably cheesy, especially coming from me, but... I've been looking for you my whole life. The Doctor blocked my memories back then, but he didn't, or couldn't, take away the image of your face. And for three hundred years, that face has been haunting me. And now I know why." He paused, then rushed on. "I was going to leave the Agency. I was going to stay here on Serenity, with you."

Her hands were gripping the top of the gate, knuckles white. She couldn't breathe.

He went on. "I know there's been a _hell_ of a lot of water under both our bridges since then. But I was wondering... I was hoping..." His voice trailed off, uncertain.

"What?"

"Now that both of us know who and what each other really is, I was hoping that maybe... we could try again." There. He'd said it.

She bowed her head, her eyes dropping to her hands. After a long moment of silence, he took a step forward, one hand reaching tentatively to cover hers, but she stepped back, out of reach. His hand dropped again to his side, as devastation threatened to flood over him.

And then he realized she'd pulled open the gate between them. And raised her eyes back to his, tears prickling.

"Come into the kitchen," she said simply. "We've got a _mountain_ of beans to shell."

_**FINIS**_


End file.
